5.1 for 3K
I'm hunting in the same general pricerange, maybe a little north of there depending on what I find I like...don't know what your listening room is like or what you listen to, but some of my findings as I've been listening:
Monitor Audio: The Silver S6s are quite nice for ~$1K (and less online). IMHO, they do not stand up to many competitors at the $1.5K-$2K per pair price point, but they are a good value at $1K or less, and the build quality and finish work are excellent too. Interestingly, I listened to the S10s in a direct A/B comparison--same stuff upstream, same room, same CDs, same tracks--and I thought the 10s were not a $2K tower speaker. So, I think the 6s are a great value, but if you were going to the next budget level I would not be that bullish on MA. I read some other folks' posts about the MA S6s, and those folks were really over the moon about them saying they performed as well as speakers far more expensive. I didn't quite agree that they were THAT impressive....to me, the lows were not all that well controlled, which is typical at that price point.
If you could go up to $1.5K-$2K for the mains, I really liked a pair of Snell 5MK2s I heard....really very dramatic step up from the MA S6 (i.e., worth the step up in $ IMO) especially in the low end where I found them to have a very elegant bass sound--controlled, tight, clear and very well blended with the rest of the range.
I loved B&W 704s, but that takes you to $2200 a pair....but maybe not so hard to find a used pair for a lot less. What struck me about these was their transparency and neutrality and that the sound was unusually well blended across the drivers. I did an A/B comparison (again, same room etc.) between these and their far more expensive siblings--the Nautilus 804s ($3500 per pair) and found the differences to be pretty slight, at least to my ears. I believe most/all of the technology is the same between the two models and that the primary (only?) difference is the cabinet design. Obviously cabinet design can play a HUGE role in performance...but in this case I didn't hear that much, which left me thinking the 704s are a great buy w/in the B&W line if you can spend $2K or so on fronts.
I have really wanted to hear PSB t65s b/c some people here recommended them very strongly, and they seem like a very direct competitor for the MA S6s. Haven't heard them, but I did hear the smaller t45s and was not all that impressed. But in fairness, hearing those smaller, less expensive t45s among a lot of other larger, substantially more edxpensive stuff is unfair and really highlights their limitations. If you audition PSB t65s, please post your reactions.
I have not heard the Axioms yet, but am eager to. Tell me what you think if you get an audition!
One concern I have about Axioms is that the cabinets are not real wood veneer, and I've heard they're nice enough looking but that cosmetics are definitely not their strong suit. These speakers will be going in a very nicely furnished new LR, and I'd really like to find speakers with cabinets that have the well crafted woodwork look you get as you go up the price ladder a bit so I don't hate the fact that there's audio "gear" standing in our nice new LR. But if these were going in a dedicated home theater room or basement or some such, I wouldn't care about that at all and would be glad I'd found something where the $ had been invested in audio performance and not cosmetics.
--Josh
