When Polks was popular, I was very skeptical about their product line, they seemed to be the more you paid, the more drivers they'd give you in a bigger cabinet. I didn't do any serious audition, but I knew what they sounded like.
I spoke with the gentleman at conrad johnson about their Sonographe SL-21 didn't catch on, even though they were very decent sounding speakers at the time. What he told me was getting into the speaker market was easy, unlike building electronic product, therefore competition was heavy. He also said that the same applied even in today's high-end speaker market, the speaker companies that make speakers that cost thousands of dollars, he wonders how many of those companies are actually making money.
Polks' one of the companies that had heavy advertisement on it's side, maybe more financial backing that allowed them to mass produce speakers until they moved their production in the mid 90's from Baltimore to Mexico. Boston Acoustic lasted awhile then disappeared, the KLH you see at the Best Buy today are the name only, (I have a few pairs of real KLHs that need work as well). I think the AR name still around. There seems to be no middle ground in the speaker market today, either pure low cost junk or super expensive ones. Just my opinion.
