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

Nope, I understood you and do not agree. Less revealing does not blunt anything. it will make it worse. That is called distortion. If there is a shelving in the frequency response that has nothing to do with cost, that is a design decision. Cheap speakers can have as much high frequency extension as an expensive one in audible frequencies.

What you describe is Philelore. Not real, but often repeated. You simply have a speaker with a shelved frequency response. It has nothing to do with more distortion (or less). A distorting speaker will make a distorted poor recording that much worse.

I think I am about to test the OP’s theory out soon with this speaker.

SIERRA-2EX PAIR - Ascend Acoustics

I was planning to replace my 10-year-old KEF LS50’s with a bookshelf speaker around $10K USD. However, the speaker listed above has a driver that I love on my headphones, and I have gear that would work with that driver on bookshelf’s. It is not a cost issue but a sonic issue on this choice.

I checked on images of Harbeth crossovers and was shocked. I dont care about the quality of the parts so much as the design itself. Check out some of the crossovers on Thiel speakers. 

@audition__audio were you shocked by the number of parts or their love of non air core inductors?

@fsonicsmith wrote:

I don't know if you are agreeing with most of what I said in this thread or not and don't care, great post.

Thank you. 

Like the old adage that a good photographer can get far better results with a cheap camera than a novice can achieve with an exotically expensive camera, an experienced listener can do amazing things with optimally placing any well designed loudspeaker if the supporting components are in place and assuming reasonable compatibility between amp and speaker.

We're definitely in agreement here :) That analogy however comes as a more easily quantifiable scenario on the one side with the "exotically expensive camera" being very likely the objectively better one (but it actually only strengthens your point), which I don't necessarily find to be the case with speakers fitted with expensive drivers, cross-overs, terminals and what not compared to alternatives with cheaper components and less luxurious cabinet finishing; it's all about the implementation of the overall design, system set-up, acoustics and physics. 

By todays standards, I don't think Peter Snell could sell a Type A. But then again, there is certain brand that defies all the odds...

It's certainly a more "technocratic" market today with audiophiles now inclined to scoff at cheap or somewhat scruffy looking drivers because of a paradigm shift and that it's an easy marketing trick and selling point luring in potential buyers with expensive componentry, irrespective really of perceived sonics. It's not necessarily to indicate more expensive drivers (and cross-overs) can't have sonic advantages in certain areas and be well implemented, but it's no guarantee either. Same with finishing and a sad current tendency of lacquer galore to make stuff look "exclusive." Whatever became of oiled real wood finishes that actually looks, smells and feels like real wood? 

Harbeth speakers may be one of the brands to counter the current tendency with their thin paneled (but wisely dampened) cabinets walls, cross-overs that don't look like much (there it is again..), and drive units that don't sport huge magnets or large diameter voice coils. In light of their sonic presentation I don't really care about that. To my ears they sound very good, not least tonally, with very natural sounding voices and commendable coherency. If one likes how they sound why not leave it at that? Seems to me they'll deliver decades of trouble free performance.