High value, giant killer speakers?

Spatial Audio's speakers can compete with many at 2X the price, not so sure about 3X the price. 

There are plenty of vintage and near-vintage speakers that compete with current offerings of 3 and 4X the price, Spendor SP100s for example. 

Magnepan are my absolute favorite for the money.  I just upgraded from 1.7i to 3.7i and couldn’t be happier! The sound is really hard to believe. Unfortunately, unless you have a truly powerful good quality amp, you will be very disappointed.  My best friend just received his new LRS Magnepans but is running them with a NAD M32 and the amp just won’t power them.

I don't think Maggies need a high-wattage amp so much as they need an amp with a very robust power supply. I had no problem running Maggies with a 90 watt/ch amp with 72,000 microfarads capacitance and huge EI Core transformer. 

The problem with the NAD M32 is its class D topology - a topology which always sounds weaker than the specs suggest. It's why it takes a 1000 watt class D sub to match the grunt of a 500 watt AB sub. I don't know the teachnical reasons for this phenomenon, but IME, class D always sounds/feels about 50% the strength of A or A/B amps.

Back on topic, I find the Maggie .7s are the greatest value of the brand - even preferable to the 1.7i.  I much prefer Spatial Audio's open-baffles to the 1.7s, but compared to the .7s, it's a tougher call. 

Vandersteens - all of them. I honestly prefer the 2s to the 3s, even though the 3s are more accurate, and the 2s with a pair of the subs over the 5s, for the same reason.

Funny, I prefer the 1s over the 2s.

@helomech How do you like bigger Mags? 3.7i or 20.7 ?

The 3.7is are too bright for my taste and lack coherence compared to the .7s. I haven't heard the 20.7s, but of the more affordable Maggies, the .7s are the best to my ears; they're actually capable of bass "slam" unlike the others I've heard. One would assume the 1.7s are even more capable in that regard but curiously, it's the opposite. I can only surmise the crossovers of 3-way Maggies cause significant dips at some bass freqs.  In all fairness, I find that 3-way speakers from many brands suffer glaring weaknesses. 

Spatial is releasing their M5 Sapphire speaker ($3K) that I'd be very tempted to try.