Yes I’ve done a ton of research here and have spent a lot of money on speakers (both with good and bad results), so I am happy to answer all your questions.

In my opinion and from much research I believe Ascend speakers (with RAAL tweeters) and Rythmik servo subwoofers are very nearly the best in the world for probably the best price you’ll ever find. Others make comparable and perhaps even better options but they’re generally exponentially more expensive and harder to obtain (not always mass produced).

Even some of the best within 2-3x the price aren’t as good. For example, before I tried Rythmik, the best subwoofer I found was from JL Audio. A JL E112 costs twice as much as a Rythmik F12, yet the Rythmik F12’s sound quality is a league beyond (due to their servo feedback loop tech, the accuracy and precision of their bass is just amazing). And the Rythmik F18 combines massive power (for movies) and incredible precision (for music) in the same product still far below the price of even JL Audio’s entry level stuff.

And other than the Sierra RAAL Towers, my second favorite tower speakers are Revel F206. The Revel F206 are fantastic speakers, but despite costing much more, they still simply aren’t as good as the Sierra RAAL Towers!

I have several speakers from Ascend, Rythmik (subwoofers), Revel, and Neumann. All of these brands are mindblowingly good, but Revel and Neumann are twice the price to get maybe only 90% as good as Ascend. Brands I’ve owned but sold or returned (due to poor performance vs price) include Bowers and Wilkins, KEF, Paradigm, Axiom, and some misc others.

Martin Logan electrostats look very cool and also can sound very impressive but they have two huge limitations:

(1) They’re far from neutral, which means they’ll make some music genres sound great and others worse. With neutral speakers, you can equalize them to suit your preference. But with colored (non neutral) speakers, you often cannot equalize them to fix their flaws (I could explain more why this is, if you want), so neutral is almost always the best choice.

(2) They ONLY sound good if your head is perfectly on axis. If you are seated in precisely the right position and don’t move your head an inch, they can be quite nice, but it’s really annoying to have the sound degrade so horribly everywhere else in the room.

But there is a certain magic to electrostats (when you are in that listening sweet spot) you don’t get from most regular speakers, so it’s a shame they have these flaws. Wouldn’t it be great if a speaker existed that combined the magic of electrostats with none of its flaws?

As it turns out, the RAAL tweeter achieves just that! RAAL’s ribbon tweeter (used in Ascend’s high end speakers) achieves the best of all worlds: these are the only speakers I know that achieves that magical holographic treble precision (detail without being harsh) usually associated with electrostats, while ALSO achieving some of the widest and most consistent dispersion pattern of just about any speaker in the world. The RAAL tweeter is a planar diaphragm very much like an electrostat, so some of the same benefits are achieved but with exceptionally wide dispersion rather than exceptionally narrow.

This amazing dispersion pattern not only makes for the most consistent sound throughout the room I’ve ever heard, but also increases sound quality on axis (because actually the majority of sound heard at any listening position comes from wall reflections, not direct sound).

Note also that all ribbons are not created equal: most of them (e.g. Martin Logan’s lower end hybrid speakers) sound (and measure) worse than a high quality traditional “dome” tweeter. RAAL is fairly uniquely exceptional, and BTW this is reflected in their objective measurements (not just subjective descriptions of “magic”).