Did I Expect too much?

Please share the name of the company and the speakers.  It would be helpful for prospective buyers to know.  Quality parts throughout is one of the reasons I bought Arendal and Revel speakers.  My subs have some lower quality parts but I expected them to at their prices points.  They still sound excellent.  

@bigtwin That's about right.  Most manufactures spend 20-25% of MSRP to build their speakers.  

It you opened up your speakers and checked out the crossovers, 97% of us would probably find electrolytic caps, sandcast resistors.  At best, you might find a generic polypropylene cap on the tweeter.

It's called maximizing profit margin.

You want to know where you will often find the best quality/value?  Speaker KITS!  Heck, I was just looking at Parts Express, the Solstice kit.  It sells for $1500/pr., the woofers alone are $360 Morel drivers x 4.  Talk about value.  And you can tweak those crossover parts, wiring, posts, at will.

Manufacturers look for the cheapest parts that get them the sound they are looking to achieve.  That is a reasonable approach.  Any other part that alters the sound could be improving the sound or making it worse from the prospective of the buyer--it depends on personal taste and system matching.  Even if one part seems to be better to the manufacturer, the  manufacturer has to consider whether it is worth putting in a more expensive part that MAY improve the sound, but not necessarily so.  I know a custom speaker builder who often builds with ultra expensive parts and wire who has, after listening to the build, substituted in much cheaper wire that was better for the particular voicing he and the customer wanted. 

This custom builder also makes custom tube amps.  Some of his most expensive builds employ very ugly and very cheap looking binding posts made of thin brass and having plastic nuts for screwing down the lugs.  They are not really cheap because these are vintage parts, but in their day, they were cheap.  He has customers insist on the posts being replaced by the like of WBT solid silver posts because they are, and they look, expensive.  The dealer prefers the sound of the brass binding posts in his amps.

I don't think there are parts that are universally better or best, it is a matter of particular implementation and personal taste. 

Please tell us a bit about the sound of the Charney speakers you have.  I have only heard their Companion model (with Voxativ and AER drivers) and liked the sound very much. 

The Charney speakers have maybe 150 hours on them.  The AER BD3 drivers are not broken in as yet.  So best to hold off on any reviews until about 500 hours.  My initial impression of the AER drivers are that they are well balanced single source drivers with whizzer cones that enhance high frequency response. Even now, the  immediacy of transitional tones is impressive.  Full review to follow.