Affordable vs. ultra expensive speakers - what's the difference?

There are many more expensive speakers than the ones you mention, and if you have the money to spend, the time to listen, the difference in sound adds more enjoyment, then those more expensive speakers are the right ones for you. If you don’t like to spend money, then the cheapest speakers are right for you. In reality, it’s a combination of your wallet and diminishing returns.

The tech in a speaker is still placed inside furniture (cabinet) with the entire package placed in a room to form the "system" you hear.  A great room makes a good system sound great and a bad room makes a good system sound bad, simple as that.  This is universal between pro studios and home listening rooms.  Microphones are the ears of a pro studio and good studio rooms make everything "record better", a direct parallel to you listening in your listening room.  Spending a fortune on loudspeakers in a bad room is a bad investment.  No EQ, no DSP, no speaker will deliver what a good room can- at home or studio.

The future of the audiophile is investing in high performance rooms first, then place technically advanced speakers inside them with wide dynamics, wide dispersion and low distortion.

Brad

@lonemountain +1.  

i already said that here like you...

But people are consumers not experimenters in acoustic...

They bough, they dont learn how to listen anyway, and most call that a "taste" ...

There is long debate about branded names value right now here...

And useless debates about "tweaks"...

Just to say my room cost me nothings and beat all the gear i could have upgrade to....We must learn acoustic, we dont buy it.... Because the highly tech acoustic room will cost more than any audio very costly system anyway...

basic treatment and simple controls acoustic method are simple at the basis anyway...Complex to tune it asking for time listenings experiments but nothing is more fun and rewarding....Nothing...Certainly not upgrading the gear in an empty  non treated and non controlled acoustical room......

The future of the audiophile is investing in high performance rooms first, then place technically advanced speakers inside them with wide dynamics, wide dispersion and low distortion.

I can provide some actual listening impressions to address the OP's question. I have the previous-gen Monitor Audio Silver 300s and have been quite pleased with their resolution and refinement especially at their very reasonable price of $2200. When I was auditioning DACs a year ago, I had purchased a Chord Qutest that was used both at home and taken to dealers as a consistent point of reference to compare to otther DACs. I was listening to a system at a local dealer and didn't recognize the floor standing speakers that had a trapezoidal shape. The speakers sounded fine but no better or worse than my Silver 300 speakers. As it turns out, the speakers were the then-new $18.5K Wilson SabrinaX s. (or about 9x the price of my MA Silver 300 speakers) Honestly, even at the same price, I'm not sure if I would pick my MA speakers or the Wilson speakers if I were listening blindly. One caveat is that I tend to listen at fairly moderate  volumes & perhaps one advantage of the Wilson speakers (and perhaps some other higher priced speakers) as others have mentioned is the ability to play loudly without distortion. In any case, that's not an attribute that is important to me.

I have heard some more expensive speakers that do pique my interest. Before getting the Silver 300s, I heard a pair of used Monitor Audio Gold 200s with a pleated AMT tweeter at about the same price. Those clearly had a clearer and more resolving high frequency response as well as a level of sweetness to the sound that was clearly better than that of the Silver 300's sound.

Many years ago, I heard a pair of well set up Martin Logan CLS II speakers. I think they now retail for $35k. The speed and immediacy of those speakers was eye-opening & I still remember how they sound many years later. BUT, I don't' really want a pair of giant "screens" in my room.

Finally, as others have mentioned, without a decent sized room with acoustic issues sorted out, I don't think there's any point in getting ultra expensive speakers.  I see pictures of people with huge floorstanding speakers costing $10k, 20k, 30k or more in 200 square foot rooms such as you might find in a New York City apartment. That just seems like an outright waste of money to me. There just isn't enough distance in some of those rooms to propagate the low frequencies that some speakers can easily produce. It's much better in my opinion to get a small precise standmount and accept that as the best fit for that size of room.