My B&W speakers

Yes, they are high-end. Just believe "they are high end", and they indeed are... All kidding aside, low end, hig end, etc.... who the hell really cares.. as long as you enjoy the music coming from them, isn't that what matters? As in any hobby, it all depends on how insane you get, and there are many on this forum that people outside would classify them as such for claiming to hear and getting excited by the minutest difference in sound. Remember, beauty is only in the eyes of the beholder!!!...:-)

A true search for enlightenment.

There is no doubt that most products from B&W would be considered high end compared to the general market of Best Buy specials. While some of the construction details are part of trickle down design coming down from prior high end efforts.

If you do move upscale, you will likely find additional performance up the ladder, but a substantial cost increase that is often an inverse of performance gain. As for your statement about the tech being the same, its the finer details the manufacture may gloss over. The use of the tapered tube to absorb resonance on the back of the tweeter is only one part. The top tweeter now uses a quad magnet structure for greater field strength, a diamond dome to push breakup nodes to beyond any signal you would possible feed, and square voice coil wire to maximize conductivity within the coil. That is just the driver itself and doesn't consider the low resonance material used in the high end driver casing or the lack of baffle plate for diffraction. The reason I mention is to show that while you receive a good dose of high end tech, they do have more tricks to apply in future models. I am sure that if you decide to upgrade to a future series, some of these might end up in your next model.

One thing is for certain, the speaker you currently own likely competes very well with cost no object design from less then ten years ago. The one you may own in a few years from now might be comparable to the best of todays models. Its the great part of technological evolution of todays products.

but a substantial cost increase that is often an inverse of performance gain.

It seems that many have tried in futility to reach musical nirvana by simply jumping up to the next model in the line. I doubt that the function is actually inverse though.

I would certainly not be shocked by that figure. I wouldn't call it a rule, but something to understand that an upgrade from a bookshelf that cost a grand compared to one that costs five does not bring five times the gain in relative performance. I would not be surprised that the inexpensive unit would put around 80% of the performance of the more expensive model. Putting a percentage figure on the whole thing is another matter and you can certainly always have a disparity in true value of a product in comparison to market competitors. In loudspeakers, I would expect to see greater gains. In cables, my expectations are quite low honestly. The 600 series is priced at around the third of the CM line. I would put the gains of the CM line at nearly a third overall. Then again, its only my opinion.

If it did happen, either the previous product was a poor or the new product is quite the accomplishment. The one thing is that performance gains is often subjective and system dependent so it will vary from user to user. In my own last speaker upgrade, the replacement had a retail cost increase of three times the predecessor. I would say that the overall improvement was only a little bit better then then a third overall. I was able to purchase the new speakers at a greater discount then the original so in the end it bested by a bit. My amp upgrades on the other hand are were not as great of a leap in comparison. Between two properly made cables, this figure can often be staggering in a bad way. You could spend ten times more and not even gain at all. If you did, I would suspect that something was out of place to begin with.