Everyone seems to think the post that follows is some kind of personal message. I pulled $250 out of my you know what as an extreme example. Oh well.
I didn't admit anything. Because, for one thing, what you said is false. Some company name of Credo ripped off Townshend's design and builds and delivers their floor standing speakers on springs. Here it is!
https://www.credo-audio.ch/ev-reference-one-eng.html Made their own tediously wordy video ripping off all Max's same ideas too
https://www.credo-audio.ch/loudspeaker-isolation-en.html As for Magico, et al, this is the same faulty logic used to discredit aftermarket power cords.
Fact of the matter is manufacturers of all kinds of things make choices that often times have nothing to do with performance and everything to do with the fact customers vary widely in their skills and abilities. It is a whole lot easier to plop a Wilson down than to crank one up onto a Podium, adjust and level.
But, funny thing, we had one do just that and you know what? Said it was totally worth it! Worth the trouble, worth the money. I must admit.
Also, very few are as open minded, innovative, logical and eager to change for the sake of improvement as yours truly. For example, it has been known now for a solid two decades that the solution to SOTA bass is a distributed bass array. Yet where are the speaker manufacturers? You have confused popular with true. Many things that are true are not popular. In a lot of cases probably never will be. So?
Then too there is this thing called the fallacy of the sunk cost. You might find this interesting. The idea is once having spent some money on something you factor that into all decisions forevermore. The money is spent, the cost is sunk, it is a fallacy to even think about it any more. But it happens all the time.
In your case what the speaker retailed for or how big the discount or what you paid is a done deal and could not possibly matter less. For proof, imagine someone gave you the best brand new Wilson speakers for free. Imagine you know they will be a whole lot better on Podiums. (They will.) But you are not going to put speakers that cost zero on a $2500 platform. Right. See?