These seem all out of my price range. You make it sound like I will not be satisfied with the volume of "traditional" home hifi speakers. I'm not looking for ear splitting levels here. Just want to be floored when on the couch watching a movie or have some music on and still be able to enjoy quality sound.
What is the one advise you often see with speakers in general?
Oh! these are really great speakers, BUT if you add high power amp like 200wpc or 300wpc power amp, these speakers really open up. There is a reason why people spend lot of money on expensive high power amps.
No one listens to at ear splitting level regularly, nor they are suggesting getting higher power amp will make speakers louder. What people in general mean to say and experience with high power amp going to speakers is speakers ability be dynamic, be clean (Higher available power means lower distortions and less struggle on speakers), balanced sound (Treble needs less power vs bass) and over all better sounding speakers vs lower power available.
So, you either take the traditional speakers with 84db to 90db sensitivity and then add more powerful and expensive amp to make them really open up, or you get the speakers with higher sensitivity which does above all with lot less power (say your traditional avr). In the end, physics does play its role, size does matter in speakers.
Having gone down to similar path to yours and like most, I have tried many different brands of speakers, some bookshelves and some much more expensive towers. In the end, I was never really satisfied with them, they didn't bring that cinematic sound, didn't sound big (not loud but big sounding), they just weren't dynamic enough, until I tried the mentioned Behringer b215xl speakers. Mind you, these are 15inch speakers but has almost no output below 80hz and subwoofer is a must with them. But what they do above that is simply amazing. And for less than $350 -$400 for a pair, it wouldn't hurt to give them a try. If their size is a concern, then give their 12inch versions a try, they are essentially same. There is a 5+ years long running thread about these speakers for a reason.
My room is only 4m x 3.8m and I certainly do not listen to reference level, still having these high sensitivity speakers it makes world of difference. To give you an example, the movie Star Trek (2009) the opening scene when Nero's ship comes out of wormhole with the music and the note playing. When watching this scene with my previous speakers, the sound didn't seem to match what I was watching, there was no sense of large scale. And when I watched the same scene with Behringer speakers, all of sudden my TV started to feel small compare to the large scale sound (again this at the normal volume level not reference level).
