High value, giant killer speakers?

but it never was seamless, and always too bright

@tweak1 

Agree, they are not neutral at all but on the bright side.

roxy54

"Sure. It's all a big conspiracy, right kenjit? "

kanjit has a point. Large manufactures start with their flagship and then price down from there. Those flag ships speakers are not their best selling speakers for sure and are mostly used for marketing and to price out the rest of the line.  They set the price point from the top then work down. They claim you achieve 90% 85% or 75% of the "sound of the flagship". It really is all marketing. 
Small companies have a different philosophy. They may only have one line of speakers, but they sill work top down. 

" Small companies... may only have one line of speakers, but they still work top down. "

Not necessarily.

I can’t speak for big companies obviously, but sometimes a small company will try to make one speaker to address one particular set of requirements, and then another speaker to address a different set of requirements, and so on. These two (or three or however many) models may end up at different price points, but that could be because they started out with different goal posts in mind.

Duke
expert on the inner workings of at least one small company

Audio Physic Virgo II must be right up there on the list