I am in the market for speakers and I am looking for proper full range speakers NO subwoofer not interested been down the skinny tower and subwoofer thing no bueno. I hate subwoofers with a passion and the complicated engineering it seems to take to get them to sound right with main speakers for 2 channel. Primary interest is 2 channel with 5.1 being distant second maybe hovering around $1500-$2000 for the pair of mains. Anyone have any hands on classic rock, Stones, Beatles, Floyd with the SVS Prime Pinnacles? Do these things "party" without a stinking sub and Audessy trickery? Heck I am tempted to buy a set of professional stage PA speakers at this point.
That is a tough one these days. Speakers have become narrower to minimise diffraction effects, and so the drivers are smaller. So you are not going to get a really low F3 however many smaller drivers you add.
The next issue is that a lot of material, even audio only is mixed and presented with a sub channel and that includes some streams now. So your points are well taken, but if you really want to cover the last octave without a sub, then you will be in DIY territory. That is the way I went, but then I always have. So I do have integrated speakers but the sub channel is still captured, but you can't do that without the speaker being active to some degree.
These are truly full range triamped speakers.
So you would have to look for something like vintage TDL speakers. However their owners very seldom part with them, so they don't come up often, and I think would be out of your budget.
The KEF B139 driver is being manufactured again by Falcon acoustics and the power increased from 100 to 200 watts. I think it always was a 200 watts speaker, but Raymond Cooke just rated them conservatively. I have driven B 139s hard and never blown one up.
I do have a design, very preliminary, for a TL using the Falcon acoustics B139 and the Volt dome midrange, now available in the US from Madisound, probably would use the Hiquphon 3/4" dome tweeter. However, even if you built it, it would be outside your price range. Speakers like you are looking for barely exists and would be way outside your price range anyway.
