Did I Expect too much?

Some manufacturers and individuals believe parts is parts, go to diy audio forums and you'll find vast majority believe measurements tell the whole story. Techies, designers, EE mostly concerned about circuits meeting certain design criteria, most of that has nothing to do with sound quality. Perhaps there is a listening panel or individual, why would you expect them to have golden ears.  As a modifier/parts changer I've been inside much equipment, use of generic parts is standard operating procedure. This is reason I no longer purchase most audio components from large corporations, I've found the smaller boutique manufacturers far more engaged with their products sound quality and using boutique parts is part of their voicing process.

I get the parts cost argument, and this may be true for some manufacturers. So,  lets say you're going to use a crap load of cheap Chinese resistors because you can get them for .20 cents apiece, this vs. Takman or other reputable resistor, perhaps these closer to $1 apiece, so I'll be generous and say there's fifty of these, so you're telling me that extra cost is not viable! Just for one example, Prima Luna uses the Takman throughout their amps and pre's, these products relatively lower priced in world of high end. The use of cheap parts in crossovers with their relatively low parts count is even more inexplicable.

What would you rather have to extract maximum profit with less overhead, a business model where you can sell a relatively small number of units with high profit margins or large number of units with small profit margins?  There is a third way, I seek out the small manufacturers with low overhead and reasonable pricing. Take a peak inside your audio components, if you have knowledge of parts cost you'll understand one facet of the price equation. Take in account packaging of component,  things like case work, speaker enclosures, these are things we can see with our own eyes and estimate value. We can also fairly estimate some overhead costs if we know about the facilities and number of employees at these firms. R&D costs certainly important as well, this much more difficult to cost out. Marketing/advertising another cost. Trying to be comprehensive here, but may have missed something in this short list. Using this information can certainly give us decent estimate of value, and I'm not saying an extremely high cost component couldn't possibly be good value. In the end law of supply and demand always wins out, high value consumer goods don't always win out in marketplace, in fact they probably rarely win out.

@steve59 I don't think need for value is the culprit here, need to keep cost of device lower and/or extract max profit margiins culprit for the labor cost part of equation. Price is the major purchasing determiner for consumer items, value hard to determine or doesn't even enter the mind.

Boutique parts don't automatically create the perfect audio component. There is intrinsic or fundamental design that is most important, parts only as good as the circuit they're placed in. The other possible issue with boutique parts is they are generally uniquely voiced vs generic parts. First off they are more likely to provide greater transparency/resolution vs the generic so voicing will be more apparent. Voicing or presentation also more individualized in the boutique part, particular design elements such as metallurgy specifically chosen for their presentation. I don't find it surprising  in regard to @larryi  post the maker didn't find those particular Mundorf caps pleasing. I've experienced Mundorfs with the silver, not going to work well in every situation, highs may be spotlit, mids thinned out, bass less full. For this situation a nice copper Jupiter film cap may have been the perfect cap.

Point is you don't just go into speakers or any component and just willy nilly put in just any boutique parts, one has to do their research, plenty of info out there on voicing or presentation of these parts. And even then one may have to experiment with a variety of these parts. I went through three different caps, two resistors, changing out various positioning of different types of hook up wire in my custom build 300B amps to get presentation I wanted. Even more changes with the crossovers in my Klischorns. And since we're talking about speakers, crossover mods are probably without a doubt where one can actually easily hear substantial change for the better. binding posts and internal wire probably should be the least of your concerns. The big changes far more likely to come from caps, resistors, inductors, I'd really emphasize the inductors as responsible for amazing differences in tonality and transparency/resolution.