A couple weeks ago I was reading about speakers that utilize TeXtreme.
I would say there is less than 50 vehicles in the world that really "need" any sort of composite cone loudspeaker to serve its intended purpose (surviving 170dB or greater pressures).
Either, buy top end "approved" products, or take the risk on "reverse engineered" at your own risk...
Oppressive taxation and other regulations chased most of the electronics manufacturing out of this country around 25 years ago and overall the entire industry is largely driven by the race to zero where the vast majority of the marketplace just wants the biggest power rating for the lowest cost. This is what drives the market.
The basic design of these circuits is rather simple (not for the layman, but for electronics design overall). Sure we get some more robust transistors these days and the quality of OP amps and switching circuits has been gradually improving over the years, but nobody has really re-invented the wheel here.
I guess the point is, don't necessarily rule out some Chinese or Korean knockoff as "poorly made" or "bad" out of hand. Kicker, for example has been manufacturing their amps in China since the 90s (possibly earlier?) and have been consistently making good quality and reliable products that deliver as advertised for a very long time. They have their own factories, their own designs, and are willing to put in enough oversight and money to make sure they have a consistent product arriving to the market.
More recently we have had an explosion of what many people call "me too" brands where pretty much anybody with a couple hundred thousand dollars of capital or credit and a few thousand square feet of warehouse space can call up China or Korea and have their logo slapped on some reasonably well performing and reliable cookie cutter equipment and become a new """brand""". There is absolutely nothing wrong with those amps and I see 10+ year old Korean and Chinese amps every year at competitions and car shows.
Even among the snobophile brands there's not all that much R&D going on, most of them are made in the Far East, and several of these "high end" companies also share the same designs for their boards (particuarly the ones with built in DSP). Mind you, they're good designs that they're paying some good talent to engineer, but at the end of the day it's going to really come down to what you like the looks of, what has the features you want/need, and perhaps which company treats you right and you feel will offer you customer support down the road if anything happens.
Or in short. As long as you stay out of the junk drawer you'll probably be fine and even the junk drawer today has some very serviceable options that'll give you a decade of reliable service.
Richard Clarke still has his 10 grand.
