Best speakers under $500? Fire away!

Huge -- but they are critical listening speakers.  What I mean by that is you have to be actually sitting down actively listening in the sweet spot to appreciate what they do that is so impressive for the money.

JBL 530 new or used around that price is hard to beat.  They were up there with Revel M20/22 for me which as you know sold for much more.

used Paradigm Studio or Focal

JBL 530's are way more than $500 from everything out there I see.

Can you please list the rest of your system? What music genre is your main passion? SYSTEM synergy matters - big-time.

I am assuming that you are also choosing pre-owned and not new speakers.

A  blind speaker brand and model offering randomly posted in this blog without knowing the rest of your system gear and your listening preferences as highlighted above, is just a blind and poor "shotgun approach"  with a very high probability of pointing you in the wrong direction.

So, can we adopt a "rifle approach" with some expanded info first?

cheers