which excels at Rock and Roll

For me, the key to great Rock & Roll speakers are the following:

1.  Great Deep Bass
2.  Great low end "Chunk" - think Drop D. or Hendrix on VooDoo child slight return.
3.  Great high end "honk" from the guitars with the treble pot turned down, smooth highs, & vocals that cut through all the distortion.

You can achieve this with Tower Speakers with lots of Bass or adding a subwoofer.  However, item 2 above my suffer with only a subwoofer supplying all the bass. 

Personally, I like towers with bass better than separate subwoofers.  It is easier to achieve the best sound for Rock.  Look for good size towers with two woofers, the larger, the better.  ie. 8" to 10" woofers.  Make sure the reviews "rave" about the bass.    For the high end "honk" like Dire Straits  "money for nothing"  and those smooth highs, think "Ted Nugent - Stranglehold", & vocals that cut through, you will need a good quality tower to achieve that.  This is where the extra money makes a difference - synergy of the tower.  In general, the more you spend within reason, the better synergy you will get and the better you will be able to hear and separate all these great distorted sounds that Rock makes.  I hope this helps you. 

@atmasphere If you want to do that you need something more efficient. Its not that the Quads otherwise will misrepresent the Ramones. My Classic Audio Loudspeaker T3s can easily play Romones or Verdi’s Requiem at 100 dB.

100Db+- 10db   40-10000hz ??

@larsman   Grinding away again. Just wondering if you considered a small or narrow tower, rather than bookshelf?  I have a SVS SB 3000 sub already in room. Just wondering if I can achieve the sound I'm looking for with a small or smaller type tower?  Also , wondering where you purchased your Martens, maybe calling them to talk some. Thanks Robert

@bache The Classic Audio Loudspeaker model T3 is, with field coil drivers, 98dB 1 Watt/1 meter and is flat to 22 Hz, employing dual high excursion 15" drivers. The downfiring 15" driver in my speakers is a TAD 1602. Its a 3-way design with the tweeter rolling in at about 10KHz. My speakers are custom built to have the same box volume as the T1, so my speakers go to 20Hz. They don’t care what you throw at them. 

Audiophila to me is about extracting details and dynamics. Thus a speaker that can reproduce classical orchestral music well, can reproduce anything well,

Orchestral music covers most of the audio spectrum vs rock and roll, where the bass and treble is most important and midrange takes a back seat. 

Given that, I would check out the kef ls50 meta, and a good sub (svs, seaton audio, etc). 

The magnepans 2.7 are detailed as hell, but when I auditioned the 1.7 years ago, I thought they lacked dynamics. However, I would want to check out the 2.7 or above. Givem they are larger they can move more air.