What's wrong with Velodyne?

"-plus no high end dealer wants to carry product that is offered in so-called "low end" places."

I suspect this is more of the case than not. It's always politics, distribution channels, marketing, etc.
I used to deal with Velodyne years ago. Their entry products gave us more problems, reliability wise. Their top end pieces came in for service much less often, however.
Althought I never was a lover of the Volodyne's personally, I felt they made good products. Personally I liked the more accurate sound of the M&K subs, Paradigms even, and the power handling of the Earthquake line in the same genre. But were talking mere preference of course.
That was my experience, for the most part.

You can't get Velodyne's high end subs at low end stores like Circuit City.

Always cracked me up how manufactures start off with those strict and stringent distribution and marketing strategies to the hi-end stores - and how they put the screws to their dealers to stay withing rigid guidelines - so as to keep their products in some upper echelon product image in the minds of the consumers. It's like, "we don't sell our products in chain stores, only high end salons!"
Yeah let the economy slide a bit, or sales figures start to slide a bit, and every manufacture starts dumping their stuff at Best Buy, Costco, and any Flee market that will take it! Er, seems as such anyway.
I remember lots of so called high end product lines that eventually made it into the average Joe's chain store.
In fact, I remember years ago when Krell first came into a high end store I was with, with owner and rep in-tow. They told us if we ever sold any products sideways, sold any floor models even, or even had the appearance of having any sort of "sale" on Krell products, that we would be ousted as Krell dealers! Yeah, the second we said we didn't want to go with them, they changed their tune REAL fast, and started offering us all kinds of flexibility and discounts!
Amazing what a little negotiating and outside influences can achieve when the tough get going...

Maddadtexas, back on 3-24-08 you started a thread "subwoofer selection help????" and named the JL Audio F113 as one of the subs you were possibly looking to buy. The next day you ordered the SVS online. I don't know why you would have named the JL Audio F113 as one of the subswoofers you were interested in since you had owned it already along with the DD15. The JL Audio is not easy to forget once it is in your system.

I actually bought both subwoofers. I bought a used JL Audio from a home theater shop here in town that went out of business and used it until the I got the Velodyne SMS-1 to set up the SVS Sub (which was really an impulse buy). Actually at one time in our family room we had a DD-15, a JL Audio F113, and the SVS PC13 Ultra, oh yeah, and the Magnepan's too. I didn't have any of them on isolation platforms, and they probably actually sounded different because the drivers of each of the subs affected the sound when each one was on due to proximity.

My wife made me choose one and get rid of the others. I loved the DD-15, I got if from a guy I work with who was moving, he ended up taking it back (same price) when I told him that I got the JL Audio (and SVS actually), I was going to keep that, liked it a lot until the SVS came and finally got set up with the SVS. The JL Audio now resides in my brothers home theater room, which is quite large, and it does an amazing job of moving air in there.

The great thing about Audiogon is being able to buy and test many pieces of equipment, with little cost, if bought correctly. I tried out a McIntosh C2200, and a ModWright 9.0 preamp after I bought my current Cary SLP98p, to make sure of which one I wanted.

I do the same thing with speakers, but I always seem to come back to the Maggies. I will prob break down and buy the 20.1's sooner or later, but I won't sell the 3.6's until I have the 20.1's in the system and decide if they are worth the extra money. As I am sure you know, the room, and mine is imperfect to be sure, has so much to do with the sound, that sometimes and upgraded component doesn't give any improvement in performance.