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

I often wonder if it is more beneficial to spend money on a better than on speakers. I wonder if you can hear the difference.  It would be nice to be able to do an A vs B comparison in your home to see what is best.  Kind of like garbage in equals garbage out.

Does anyone out there listen to the Sophia speakers?

I have a remarkably good-sounding pair of unlabeled speakers purchased in China when living there. They look suspiciously like the Sophia product.

Considering the inordinate amount of garbage stockpiled into a Harbeth bookshelf speaker (like there was a contest to see which network could be the most complicated piece of junk anyone could produce on design day), it is not at all surprising to hear that a less expensive and well engineered speaker could wipe the room with them. While you didn’t mention brand, I did. Imagine what they could sound like if you could improve them. But you can’t. You’d have to go external to make any headway. Trying to replace all the cheap Chinese scraps in the network with quality components would be cost prohibitive in the face of the initial outlay and the fact that the cheaper parts are smaller. No room to do a straight swap in their bookshelf designs. 

I own four sets of loudspeakers. My Large Advents and B&W M805's were re-worked by John L of Van L Speaker Works with new internal wiring and X-overs. My Devore O/93's and Spendor D7.2's do not suffer-I am pretty darned sure-from the maladies you describe. 

But all that said, emphasizing the quality of the internals when there are so many other factors at play-driver quality, enclosure quality, overall design is a bit much. 

I can't agree with you at all @fsonicsmith . Give me those Magicos and cheap but competent electronics with the room to match. I need a good turntable setup for some cherished recordings. The rest it's easy to find.