Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?

@daveyf 


Really, saving me money? 
Has Magnepan ever offered a better crossover to see if I would willingly pay $2,500 instead of $2,200 on the 1.7 series? We are talking about a discretionary income purchase here, not a necessity and the convenience of getting this upgrade is more than worth the extra dollars to me. 
I'm not alone in this opinion as people that are inveterate tinkerers make YT videos showing us how cheap the stock product is made and what can be achieved with modifications, and some people take the time to record comparisons that a good dac and headphones will reveal a demonstrable difference. And some people make a living off of the modifications, either completely or as part of their line of upgrades to a number of speaker manufacturers.
If Mag can make a 15-20% better sounding speaker how many more people in this hobby would pay what some people consider an inadequate amount for speaker cables or interconnects to have "the only reasonable choice" in a price segment? There are only a handful of "full range" speakers in this price range that have adequate low level bass where a sub is not needed to have satisfactory bottom end, so whether they are smaller boxes or smaller panels, the person interested in the quality of sound is going to have to lay out at least $1k per side in addition to the speaker pair price. 
Wendell reminds me of an senior engineer I worked with at Polaroid back in the 90's who said that ccd cameras will never be inexpensive enough for the general public because $165 was the cheapest we could buy an LCD display to put in a camera. Because of him and his lack of understanding of what was going on in the markets and the offshoring of manufacturing, and others like him at that company they didn't jump into that market with both feet where other photography companies were, and they missed the digital boat and went out of business. 
Of course I could make a more convincing argument to that point by discussing their marketing department, but that would just be cruel in this context.

@nd1der

I don’t hate them, I bought them back in the beginning when there was more attention to cosmetics, and I have the current model.

I’m pointing out the fact that when someone has a question as to why the current models are underbilt, the answer is always "Wendell says...". And I know that to be true because I talked to him 3-4 years ago about my homemade Maggie’s Little Helpers, he was totally dismissive, insisting that the current product line is "good enough".
Since he’s a marketing professional, where are his side by side comparisons to prove to us that he is right?
Make one as well as it can be made with current technology and let the market give feedback on what improvements they would and would not pay for. Because now that I know what an upgraded crossover can do for my speakers I am compelled to buy the parts and install them myself. However, I am on the fence about the frame material and it's lake of resistance to torsion until I remove the grill cloth and see what can be done with lateral struts to improve rigidity.

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.