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

Inexpensive drivers have relatively low distortion at low volume levels. It’s possible to make a relatively inexpensive speaker with good dispersion and somewhat flat response. Don't push it too hard and it can sound okay. Most expensive speakers do use better quality drivers that allows playing louder with low distortion. There is no guarantee it will have a flat response or good dispersion. Usually more expensive speakers control mechanical resonances better but no guarantee. No guarantee on a lot of things. Some of these companies seem to have seat of pants approaches to design.

@serjio can you make a knowledgeable statement wrt to volume mfg, markup and resale? How about the cost for a fancy product look but contributes nothing to sound? What about adding really expensive parts like ultra expensive caps and wire that provides limited or no improvement yet significantly increases cost.

@theaudioamp why do you need it? - Are you a manufacturer ? ... don't reinvent the wheel! .. here, as in any production process - the better the components, the intellectual capabilities of engineers - the higher the result (this is the general temperature in the hospital - with the exception of frankly illiterate products) ... A small manufacturer is not able to compete with a major professional ... only if he is more professional and his goods are "handmade" (but then the price will be higher than mass production) .

Large manufacturers often don’t have an industries best people. The best people don’t like bureaucracy. There is no need for hand made either. As well using contract MFG you often access better cost supply chains. Have you seen how much human touching is involved in high end B&W speaker MFG. With speakers you have independent driver companies so you may have as much tech access as anyone else. The worlds best speaker testing system is $100K only. The largest barriers are mainly marketing. Large volume will always drive costs down, but volume requires a beast on the sales and support end. Then we have that volume usually appeals to glitz not necessarily accuracy.