It is amazing the level on sonic improvement that can be realized with smart cap, inductor and resistor upgrades in speakers. Most builders use run of the mill and “cheap” crossover parts in their $20,000 speakers. They do it to save money. That simple.
This is something I’ve never quite accepted about high end audio. If the sonic improvement is “amazing” by flipping $1 caps for $40 caps, why wouldn’t the builder do that themselves? To fetch $20k for your speakers you gotta sound amazing; and the return on cost for being able to sell them in another tier should be huge. So why don’t they do it? The only answer I can come up with is that it doesn’t make a difference; or the difference it does make doesn’t fit the sound the builder is going for.
If I can make my $10k speakers sound like $15k with $300 worth of parts... why didn’t the guy do that and sell them to me for $15k?