There are three ways a storied manufacturer of expensive audio components can bring down prices while endeavoring to preserve the sound that made it storied in the first place. The first technique is what I call contraction. This is where a builder of, say, loudspeakers uses the same basic (sometimes identical) building blocks it uses in its big boys to create new models that might be fewer in number and/or or smaller versions of their brethren. In the realm of speakers, this not only reduces driver costs but, inevitably, cabinet costs as well. In electronics, an example of contraction would be an amplifier with identical componentry, but with reduced wattage.