Martin Logan Motion 60XT, best value ?

Not you, Caphill said they are awful.

The cabinet bracing of the Motion 60XT is awful, the material that the cabinet is made of is awful. They also dictate how the speakers will sound and perform. 

That indeed couls explain why they sound bad as you said.

Yup. The internal cabinet bracing isn’t well designed and built. Those big boxy cabinets of the Motion 60XT also allows internal standing wave inside the speaker cabinet that creates cabinet resonances or coloration. That was pretty much what I was hearing when listening to these Motion 60XT at the hifi store. It would have been fine if it was well braced internally but unfortunately these speakers aren’t.

If you want to go with Martin Logan you should look into their electrostatic planar / hybrid speakers. They are pretty awesome. They throw big soundstage and sounding very vivid especially with vocals due to a non-cabinet design.
They aren’t for everyone though. Either you really love them or you don’t. They aren’t my cup of tea however. It’s all about personal preferences. But these ML electrostats planar speakers require good quality high power or high current amplification from your amplifier in order to do these speakers justice. These electrostats planars need high current amplifier in order to properly disperse the sound throughout their planars. The bigger the planars are the more power hungry they get. 
I wouldn’t recommend running these off an AV receiver or incompetent amplifier.

Caphill,

I have been a Martin Logan fan for a while now, and currently have some Motion (not 60XT) and ESL speakers, along with B&W and others over the years. And I agree with you about the Motion 60XT, which I recently had the opportunity to demo against Golden Ear Triton3 (maybe not a fair fight) and Definitive Technology BP9020/9040/9060 (again maybe not a fair fight). The Motion 60XT didn't sound as good to me that any of the others - even though I am a fan of the folded tweeters (which Golden Ear also has).

The ESL's are power hungry (100 watts minimum required), and too directional except for sweet-spot listening. But wow do they have a great sound in the sweet spot - amazing. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well for home theater where an audience of more than two can't all sit in the sweet spot. They broadcast sound like a spotlight, and anywhere other than directly in front of the electrostats all you hear are reflections.

To be honest, I liked the Golden Ear Triton series best, but DefTech is less expensive and I liked those nearly equally (plus the nice incorporation of Atmos toppers with that BP series). I noticed you didn't mention either of those in your recommendation for 60XT competitors. One aspect of both Golden Ear and DefTech I don't like is the apparently non-removable grills - is that correct?