Only 1 JL subs costs $900, and that is retail. Many people have purchased 12W7s for $500 or so, authorized. The W6v2s are even cheaper. The argument about price doesn't seem to hold water in this case. I would not pay retail price for a 13W7 either because I would just never pay $900 for a sub. I have heard a 13W7 in an install and it was incredible, but I simply don't need that much, and I don't have $900 kicking around, anyway. The 12W6v2 is all I would ever need in a sub. I don't care about spl, and I don't need a sub that will handle a bazillion watts. I am very good friends with the guys who own the local shop, and I got an excellent deal on the W6v2. That said, given my experience with it, I would have paid $400 for it and not thought I got completely robbed of my money. It sounds excellent on any type of music I listen to, and it gets plenty loud for me.
I don't know who is winning the sq competitions(don't really care about those either), but the w6v2s and w7s are widely accepted as some of the best sounding subs available(regardless of who is or is not using them in sq competitions). I don't know what sub would sound "best" to my ears since I obviously haven't heard every sub on the market. It might be what I have now, it could be an idmax, it could be an ED sub, a Phase Linear Alliante, a Dyn, a Focal, who knows. One thing JL has on many of those brands is accessibility. If you don't have a focal dealer around, you can't hear the sub. Many people(myself included) do not like to buy subs/speakers blindly. I want to know exactly how it will sound before I pay the cash. That is much easier for people to do with JL equipment since it is more readily available than many brands. That is just the way it is.
We need to differentiate here. When somebody bashes JL, people respond. The basher then gets in their head that "oh these people just think JL is the best." That isn't necessarily the case. Most people respond to counter ridiculous statements. That doesn't mean they think JL makes the best subwoofers in the world(some may think that, some may not, and others may not know).
Some people like the underdog. You see ED and RE fans bash JL sometimes. Hell, I think ED has been hyped on the forums MUCH more than JL over the past 3 years. 20 years ago, JL was the underdog. They were pretty new on the scene and their performance won out. Have they not stayed true to what they were doing back then? They have several lines of subs from entry level to very high end. They put the $$$ into R&D to come up with new things(w7s, w6v2s), and when JL does that, other companies fight to follow so it is good for the consumer in the long run.
