Could it be that the rooms you are listening to these speakers in are problematic? Treating a room well is very hard, and needs to be adjusted for each speaker. Frankly I’ve never been to a dealer or heard at a show a real well set up room. Dealers tend to be full of excess junk (for example multiple sets of speakers aka resonators, Linn knew this back in the 80s) and don’t get me started on how bad shows are ...
In ear headphones (I have Campfire Andromeda’s) can be great and do some things it’s very hard for large speakers to equal.
My suggestion is to buy a cheaper (maybe smaller) set of speakers for the time being and then really work on the room to make them sound the best. It’s certainly worked for me. My current speakers, while not cheap, represent less than 10% of my system cost. Too many seem to think big and expensive speakers is the way to go and over stress the room or expose upstream issues.
In ear headphones (I have Campfire Andromeda’s) can be great and do some things it’s very hard for large speakers to equal.
My suggestion is to buy a cheaper (maybe smaller) set of speakers for the time being and then really work on the room to make them sound the best. It’s certainly worked for me. My current speakers, while not cheap, represent less than 10% of my system cost. Too many seem to think big and expensive speakers is the way to go and over stress the room or expose upstream issues.