When a budget speaker is preferred to a high end one...

In a recording studio to make sure the mix will sound good on a car radio.

Many good studios use both.

This is quite common in my experience.

Over the years and after having attended many Hi-Fi shows I’ve very rarely come away thinking that the most expensive speakers were ever the best on show.

The one exception was the Avantgarde Trios which imaged and scaled exceptionally.

At the same time I can’t ever recall the cheapest speakers ever sounding the best either, although last year someone was selling a pair of large bookshelves (in Baltic birch cabinets) which were rocking way out of their shockingly low price range (<£600).

They weren’t the best in show, that might have been the Kudos Titans (£17k), but it did illustrate the huge disconnect often seen between price and performance.

Just why this happens so often isn’t easy to explain but I have noticed that really expensive speakers usually tend to be more revealing in one area more than others and this often works against them.

The result can be that they not only reveal the faults in the recording they often end up highlighting issues within their own performance too.

Increased resolution can be a 2 way sword unless a careful sonic balance is not also maintained.

https://www.hifipig.com/mycetias-vulcanian-loudspeakers/

If a budget speaker is tuned to your ears more closely than the high end speaker of course it will be preferred. 

There is no difference between high end and budget speakers. Only the price.

Super high-end systems require a lot of work from the listener. Everything is laid bare. Most times I just want to play some tunes and enjoy what I’m hearing, not try for a critical listening session. You can be perfectly happy with very modest components. I urge everyone to spend time listening to statement systems, so you know what is possible but use that experience to help identify the characteristics that are important to you. I like critical systems, but I spend 95% of my time listening to my fun systems. 

i have much more fun listening to my budget bookshelf speakers than i do my big @$$ expensive ones.  I 2nd what russ said above in his last sentence.