I’d rather have a loudspeaker that’s well designed with run of the mill components than a less well designed loudspeaker with state of the art components.
I definitely agree with this. As much as I’m concerned about internals, it would be even worse to get something with a poorly designed and constructed cabinet. The way I see it (and I could be wrong) if you’re starting with a well-designed and solidly build cabinet the sky is the limit as to how great a speaker can be if a person is willing to do some mods on their own. I do agree with you guys that sound quality is more important than internal components. And I understand that manufacturers have to carefully select components to ensure that there is still a profit at the end. I’m just concerned about extreme cases where crossovers and wiring of a $10,000 or more speaker are the same as those in a$200 to $400 speaker. To me that seems like sticking it to the customer even if they sound good. As for the Tidals and Rockports and such, I’ll have to check to see how many gold bars I have in the vault