Speakers with imaging "Free of the box"

Peak Consult InCognitos [old style, NOT the X anniversary edition].

Not sure these weren't already mentioned but ACI Sapphire XL's.

I concur with Bdgregory's mention of Totem Acoustic loudspeakers regarding "transparency". I am running Forest's myself. As others have said, the whole audio hardware chain absolutely affects the final result - not to mention recording quality. From the responses, there's a lot of other good sounding stuff out there to consider.

I think the most interesting phenomenon I enjoy is when a musical entity is recorded hard left or right and still the sound seems to come from somewhere external to the drivers or the speaker itself. I find this to be true with Kharmas (and before this with Apogee Stages). Do other speakers out there do this? [By the way, I also will add my thanks to Mikelavigne for all the great, insightful posts of his over the years. I always look forward to them.]

The DCM TFE200's has some of the best stereo image that I have ever heard.... www.dcmspeakers.com