Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?

Let me frame this another way, since the topic has expanded.

Do you feel bilked when paying audiophile prices for a speaker that uses consumer electronic grade parts?

@audioman58,

I'll check out the Spatial Audio speakers when I get a chance.

You make one point for me: Is Magnepan competing with itself, or other speaker companies? They seem to be operation on the assumption that if you want a better speaker than the 1.7i you’ll buy their 3.7i; but there are more than a thousand other companies making high end speakers out there, so why not take business from them, and not the next level up in your line? 
I really like my 1.7i's, but now I have to upgrade them after hearing the moded ones. Making me do that is the quest to have the best product for me in this package. There is a rational reason to do this in a market based on taste and audio acuity, and every other hobby like this, from performance cars to instrument manufacturers companies of a performance version to the person that can appreciate those improvements at a higher cost.

@william53b I think you are missing Wendell’s point about affordability. I believe what he is stating is that Magnepan could make more complex and higher quality speakers, but that is not where they want to go, as the price points that they would have to charge would not allow them to be affordable to a majority. He believes ( as do I guess the rest of the folks at the factory), that what they are making is good enough for the job that their followers are expecting. I would suspect that this would be hard to argue with, given their success.
I used to own Maggies, way back in the day, I owned them because as a newbie in the hobby I thought they were great sounding and their price was easy on my pocketbook. I still think this appeal works for a very large number of folks who really don’t want to fork over mega bucks to get good sound. IF you want a better speaker with better quality and parts and maybe better SQ, there are a lot of more expensive options to choose from, but I see no reason to dump on Wendell, or Magnepan.

Way too many armchair “speaker designers” in this thread.