Martin logan vs. B&W

Davewav1, I don't think I could agree at all with your statement about the soundstage of MLs being like listening with headphones. I have owned a lot of speakers in recent years, including Thiel 2.2 (while not the 2.3, they are very close). I liked the Thiels (especially for the couple hundred bucks I paid for them). They imaged and soundstaged well, where quite detailed (which I like) and had an overall very good presentation. I also own Wilson W/P 5.1s which do everything the Thiels did only much better (which they better do considering the price difference). I love the W/P. I also owned Wilson Duettes, also an excellent speaker which I prefered over the Thiel. I also owned VS VR 4 JR and several Totem models and some B&W speakers, none of which were as good as the Thiels.

However, my conflict is with your sound staging statement. The size, width, depth and focus of the sound stage with the Martin Logan speakers is in my opinion much better than I experienced with the Thiel speakers (though I did find a pair of 7.2 did a marvelous job of these attributes as well and would probably rank the 7.2s above the MLs). My reference is ML Quest Zs only.

I would not say that all around the MLs are better speakers than Thiels as this is purely a subjective matter and taste of sound one is seeking. MLs have their weeknesses no doubt and for some (possibly even me, I am still determining this), the Thiels and many other brands of speakers will be more favored, for others, not.

Not sure if it is necessarily fair to say there are much better speakers at these price ranges. Speakers are so subjective. I agree there are very different speakers than both the ML and B&W speakers at and below this price range and many people will have no problems finding equally and even lower priced speakers that they prefer over the two. Both the B&W and the ML speakers have in my mind a house sound - some like and others don't.

On the otherhand, based on the used market, both the ML and B&W speakers (assuming you like their house sounds) are very good values due to the fact that they are both very common on the used market. If you are looking at making a speaker purchase, I would suggest a couple of different brands, known for different sound characteristics and try to listen to them (even if the brand available to auditon may not be your target brand - you can at least get an idea for that sound type and your preferences). As a note, I would include the following speakers to audition to get a feeling for what one likes:

B&W (in my book a bit subdued) and ML (unique - love or not)(as they are the subject of the thread so they should both be audtioned, both are common with lots of retailers to make this fairly easily possible). I would also add:
Thiel - detailed more forward sounding speaker (fair number of dealers as well), you could add Totem to this style as well, but a bit less so in terms of detail and forwardness.
Vandersteen - a bit more neutral, but gets everything very good but does not totally excel at any one given area as a best

In my opinion, listening to the 4 above brands will give people a pretty good sense of what type of sound they like and will allow them to better narrow the variety of speakers they want to pursue based on these sounds. Since I have not listened to all speakers (obviously), perhaps others can chime in with different speakers that have "stereoptypical characteristics" to expand the auditioning and find appropriate dealers in your area.