I think you know this but I'll say it anyway. Price can't be used to compare speaker performance. A competent speaker designer, with appropriate engineering tools at his/her disposal, can make more enjoyable speakers with bottom of the barrel parts than a poor designer with great parts who does nothing more than back of the envelope calculations. The amount of time the design team is given and the design budget of course also matters and so does manufacturing capability.

Another aspect of price is expected sales volume. What do I have to price my speaker at to sell a particular volume and how does that inform the material cost and R&D budget I can support for that design in order to extract a profit?

Corporate objectives also matter. I can sure as shit tell you Ian's objectives are different than KEFs. Ian does stuff because he wants to and can. KEF, Harman, Klipsch and the big brands agonize over whether a particular idea ought to be brought to market because they want to bet right and that includes price and getting quick payback. I totally doubt Ian thinks about payback.

House of the Rising Sone
Out in the mid or far field
Dedicated mid-woofers are over-rated