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

nobody here seems to have accentuated one salient issue- the world of audio recordings is not all "audiophile-approved." the majority of surviving recordings are decidedly of sub-par audio quality, and even sub-par musical quality, and if you listen to these through a less ruthlessly revealing speaker system/total audio system with mainly "sins of omission," you stand a good chance of not being able to clearly hear the aforementioned audible sins, thereby allowing for a greater amount of relative enjoyment of a greater number of recordings then less sullied by the [now] glossed-over sins of commission on a mediocre record.

i must comment that one member here misunderstood my meaning, i was not talking about speakers which put out bona-fide distortion, i was talking about less-revealing speakers esp. in the treble range. many poor recordings have obnoxiousness in the treble range, and a less-revealing speaker will tend to blunt or obscure those treble failings. ONLY in that limited respect do such speakers "sound better" on the vast universe of mediocre recordings out there [like the ones i have found at flea markets and garage sales and goodwill stores since the 70s], only a minority of recordings are "audiophile-approved" and i suspect this commenter is not familiar with the mediocre [worn or poorly made] recordings i have and like a lot, as well as my experience in listening to those particular recordings with a 50 year old set of inexpensive speakers in a non-audiophile-approved room.  similarly, a speaker that images in a substandard way will not as eagerly remind its listener of a flawed/poorly made stereo recording, it will tend to make lopsided stereo mixes less obvious. these recordings NEVER sounded better to my ears on fancier equipment, their flaws were made too obvious to me.