I saw this question on reddit and thought, what a great question!
by Koss equivalents, you should automatically think of the Porta Pro’s, KPH30i and KSC75.
essentially, what are the speakers out there that have exceptional sound despite their ridiculously low / affordable price?
Micca, Edifier/Swan, I guess?
The problem with speakers is that the drivers and crossover can be dirt cheap; the real cost is in the cabinet and shipping the blasted heavy things. You’ll find great deals for bookshelves, but you gotta add on a sub to get their worth–luckily, some $100 are banging deals.
Koss can get away with fairly good drivers tacked on to a cheap build, and honestly the prices for Koss gear have risen like two-fold due to popularity.
I think the best deals you can get in the speaker world is DIY. You can get really nice kits from Partsexpress and with some tools or just knowhow you can assemble some rocking speakers. There’s also the Hivi 3.1A DIY speakers that Zeos put together, but he didn’t do the “perfectionist crossover” mod so that’s why he’s not in love with them. You can also go far-far deeper into this world by dual amping and use a miniDSP as a crossover.
Subs and hometheater receiver go a long way. The miccas the neumis klipsch when those R51s go on sale. The sony sscs5 has good reviews with them supertweeters.
ELAC klipsch jamo for those that think $300 speakers are cheap.