As far as I’m aware, no coax design comes close to the Genelecs.
So if you have the budget, then just go with them.
Geithain and KS Digital are two other good ones, but they’re in Europe.
The Kali IN-8 are great, but they have the hiss issue if used in the nearfield. Charles Sprinkle seemed to think IMD is negligible — although I’d like to see comparisons of IMD in the IN-8 and the LP-8 just out of curiosity.
The Presonus Sceptres use a much larger horn loaded waveguide and skirts the issue of IMD altogether. It also solves the problem of “honkiness” from naturally occurring distortion in such designs which use a long narrow tube and sharp corners by using DSP neutralize internal reflections and resonances.
It will not, however, come close to the smoothness of Genelecs due to the geometry of the horn waveguide and its discontinuity from the rest of the baffle.
I do not know of any speaker at its price that has better phase performance at all angles with the same ability to resolve fast transients. The KH120 sound sluggish and muted by comparison. Though I’d like to know if Kef’s coaxes can do the same (much more expensive). I haven’t really seen any detailed time domain measurements in any of them — that I can recall at least. Only frequency response and some spinorama plots thanks to
@napilopez!
Notably, it’s somewhat tricky to EQ in places (if so desired) as directivity behaviour is more uneven at certain angles — not to mention EQ also depends (to a smaller degree) in the space they are to be used or placed in. So it’s not a good idea to just completely flatten the on-axis or listening window curves and be done with it... nope.