I think there is a calibration point below which a speaker cannot compete with something more expensive. To take an extreme case, a $200 speaker will very rarely sound better to the ttypical ears compared to a $2000 speaker. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but that’s my sense of things. So at what point is the cut off? Is a pair of $800 speakers likely to be able to sound better to any given individual than something that cost four times as much? I think it depends on one’s ears and whether one is in a used or new market. At any rate, when I am considering purchases like speakers I try to start off looking just beyond what I consider to be the calibration point and then go upward as necessary to find something I like.
