Donbellphd: what are you missing?
Well, first, the budget proposed by the author of the thread ("I do not have a specific budget, but let's say less than 10K used"). I proposed a $5k and a $10k alternative.
Second, rock music is quite hard to reproduce convincingly because it is supposed to be played back at high volume -- most speakers compress when asked to reproduce big orchestral crescendos or rock and roll at live levels. There are very few speakers at any price that can get you near the decibel levels encountered with a live rock performance in a club or other public venue. It so happens that the Mahlers and Salons are such speakers (and they have finesse, which the author of the thread also wrote was important to him, and which he won't get in a speaker that also has great dynamics without spending some money).
Finally, you are confusing distortion in the performance and distortion produced by speakers that lack dynamic headroom and are pushed too hard. The former is part of a rock performance and is captured on the recording, generally resulting from the use of tube guitar amps (and in the early days of rock, primitive recording equipment that compressed when faced with the sound pressure levels of rock -- this is audible on, for example, a lot of blues recordings (Elmore James) and some of the early Stones albums), and requires a top-quality speaker to reproduce accurately. As for the latter, it is just a speaker lacking dynamic headroom or lacking proper amplification that is being overdriven, which screws up any kind of music, including rock.
In short, it is difficult (I would even say extremely difficult) to find a speaker in his price range that can really do rock and that has finesse (and that are aesthetically pleasing and built by companies that back their products, which were the other features he seeks).
