Are you looking for the best performance with least effort and cost or do you enjoy spending more money than necessary?
You really just can’t grok this issue, can you?
If I go to a local restaurant with a great chef and enjoy some fine dining am I "spending more money than necessary?" Of course not. I could potentially spend the time learning to cook at that level myself, shop all over for the ingredients, and keep trying until I cook a good meal.
But....
Since I DON’T WANT to spend my time that way, and also can’t be even guaranteed I’d match the talent of the chef in any case, I make the totally rational decision to spend extra money having a professional chef cook for me.
Similarly, yes speakers sound different of course. And if it’s the case that a Jeff Joseph design stands out to me as just what I want, the alternative you seem to imagine is that I become a DIY speaker designer. So I’d have to spend significant time and resources taking up a craft that I don’t want to do in the first place, and then hope to hell that I somehow match the results of someone with years of experience and whose designs have been vetted as outstanding by reviewers and listeners, which measure really well etc.
But I don’t want to! We all make the rational decisions on how to spend our time on this earth, and most of us don’t want to learn a craft instead of make a purchase. That’s why people pay for services and products made by other people!!! When you have other people do things for you...it costs MORE than if you do it because you are paying for THEIR labor, knowledge, and business overhead.
Why you keep ignoring this fundamental principle of an economy to keep implying one is "needlessly spending too much" just because ’you could do it yourself’ is bizarre.
What a stupid, and utterly naive dichotomy you have going there.
And saying things like this:
It does NOT require speaker acumen. There is no such thing.
Immediately removes you from any rational consideration. You don't know what you are talking about.