The audio industry still doesn't make sense to me...

[j0nnyfive]

I may be wrong in my thinking (due to my lack of technical and sales experience), but I can't help but think that the audio industry is a bit "wonky".

I'm not blaming the engineers and designers. If anyone is to blame, it's the buyers and maybe marketing departments(?) Or maybe it's me. Maybe it just takes me a long time to understand things.

But to me, this seems so obvious.

In my opinion, there should be an ENTIRE CATEGORY of high-end 2-way bookshelf speakers that emphasize midrange performance and efficiency over bass extension, and are expected to be used with nice subwoofers. It just seems to me that most speaker companies should have this category along side the other more full range speakers.

Of course, I think there should still be "full range" speakers that don't need subs for people who just want simple setups or are heavily space-limited or budget-limited.

It just seems like this is a completely missing category in this industry. The CBM-170 SE is the kind of speaker I'm thinking of, but with more "upscale" drivers (like RAAL) and enclosure materials (like Bamboo).

This is taken from the CMT-340 SE sales page, but this makes sense to me in the context of bookshelf speakers with deep bass. I'm going to substitute the word "bookshelf" for the word "tower":

" In a quality home theater system, subwoofers are required and reproduce low frequency information far superior to 99% of all (bookshelf) speakers. With a full range (bookshelf) speaker, why pay for bass twice and sacrifice the critical midrange and high frequency performance?"

I don't know. Why? Why do other people not want high end 2-way bookshelf speakers that maximize mid-range clarity and efficiency? Is there some technical limitation that I'm not aware of? Is there some upper bass quality that can only be attained by making midbass drivers play as deep as possible? (again, I feel like I'm talking to the buyers/markets here. I know that Dave is limited to designing and building only what there is demand for.)

Can someone help set me straight in my thinking? What am I missing? I do love my Sierra 2EX speakers (I'm not complaining at all about my speakers). But I'm running them without a subwoofer. When I get subwoofer(s) later, I know this subject will surface in my mind again. Are we all just stuck, paying for our bass twice, forever?

Stay safe everybody.

P.S. I know about the Luna, but it's a small speaker (different category).