No pissing contest required. You asked how, I answered. There is no way to put experience into a quantifiable numerical answer and regardless - like I posted, numbers don't make a sounder. Don't bother with the PM.
Your Lowrance post - you may have been given a bum steer as to the companies history I'm afraid. Up until chirp came about Lowrance wouldn't have known a deep water sounder if you belted the MD of the company about the head with it. They had been chasing the Japanese and Simrad in the race for deep water performance for like - ever. Lowrance's parent and main US market was the bass fishery - why - that's where the money was.
Navico - the investment company that now owns Lowrance, killed off one of the better deep water sets when they purchased Simrad and "Lowranced" the sounder component. Compared to them back then we were a deep water fishery predominantly - at least those that bothered with sounders. They were years behind in even introducing 50KHz as a frequency and even then you only got it if you purchased a separate (and somewhat expensive transducer). All their earlier offerings were 192Khz and used cone angles that made any sort of definition beyond 50 metres near on non existent. They even manufactured a "3D" model that was a dismal flop at 192KHz using a 6 beam transducer - in a direct response to Humminbird doing it first. They also struggled in the deep water markets because as the rest of the world went to colour and the inherent echo return strength differentiation it provides, Lowrance chose to stick with LCD on the grounds of being water proof (ish).
It was well down the road - long after some of the Japanese manufacturers, that Lowrance, with the availability of cheaper Colour LCD displays, went to colour and at the same time someone in marketing made the decision to go to more traditional frequencies - probably to allow them to utilise Airmar's range of transducer options and give them transducers alongside their own, that could provide deeper range capability.
It was Airmar's chirp transducer development that has driven the sounder manufacturers push into chirp for a traditional 2D picture. For some of the manufacturers it has provided a cost effective way to finally attempt to challenge the Japanese in the deep water race.