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

Very interesting thread. My experience is that this all becomes moot when you start focusing on the quality and uniqueness of the music. After 40 years of system building I just said this is my stereo and here I stay. Mostly. The access to new and interesting music is where I put my energy nowadays.

The key word in the OP is “preferred”, and no assertion of “best”.This is a fine but important distinction. It introduced the unavoidable factor of personal bias and personal taste , which we all understand.

@blisshifi clearly addressed the resultant highly variable, and intuitively bespoke personal value judgement options, in good form .. full stop.

“… “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

-WARREN BUFFETT

Yes, it is possible to experience that (but in my experience, not for long)...

Because we have so much choice; 

Because we have such varied hearing perception;

Because we have different wants and needs;

Because we have different things influencing our lives;

Because our systems are different;

Because our listening environs are different;

Because we don't find the time,

Etc; etc.

The matrix of reasons and influencing factors, immense.

Purchase what works for you at the time...

...but be prepared to want more later

Isn't our hobby fun?

@kenjit wrote "There is no difference between high end and budget speakers. Only the price."

Please can you explain your rationale for this statement?

Thank you,

BP

Yes this exact situation happened to me. I had an mv55 Conrad Johnson tube amp. I sounded glorious with my JM Labs Daline 2.1's, which were limited range speakers that went down to about 40 hertz. I put the mv55 on a pair of Wilson wp7s and heard a lot of grunge which made me think that Wilson's weren't so good. I asked the dealer who had let me do this experiment what was happening and he said that the amp was producing lower quality sound in the deep basd and that the Wilsons were now reproducing that where my JMLabs weren't.

So I don't know about better or worse,  but if you have full range speakers you have to have higher quality electronics in the entire chain leading to it.