Analytical or Musical Which way to go?

A neutral speaker should not sound neutral. I would not want to be in the position of arguing that speakers that don't measure well are preferable. As Atmassphere pointed out, if a speker sounds good but measures poorly you are measuring the wrong thing.
I am a criminal defese attorney . When DNA testing first appeared I was against it because the sample size was way to small to apply it to the general population. That of course has changed.
Dr. Olive concedes that the results of his test (sample size)is too small to extrapolate it to the general population. Morever saying young people and audiophiles have the same preferences is not only wrong IMO but is not supported by any evidence that I am aware of it. The majority of those who heard speaker that measured well seemed to prefer them over speakers that measured less well. The good news is that as far as I know the test are ongoing. It is likely one day he will have a large enough sample with a proper demographic. Testing students on a high school field trip is hardly a scientific sample.

Drew Echardt- I heard the Orion at RMAF 2010. I liked them and found them to be very smooth.

"While the small sample size of listeners does notallow us to make generalizations to larger populations, nonetheless it is reassuring to find that both the American and Japanese students, regardless of their critical listening experience, recognized good sound when they heard it, and preferred it to the lower quality options. "

Dr Sean Olive

How can you debate 'taste' preferences? It does make for a lively discussion, but as I first heard from my Dad...'There is no accounting for tastes'. But again, it does make for a fun discussion.

WHen you are dealng with marketing, you want to make products that customers will buy. No one wants to make what they think is a great speker and have it sit on the shelf.

Harman IMO has gone full circle. They not only think they make the best speaker. They attempt to replace your idea of what the best speaker is.
This may work on a focus group at the Harman factory, let's watch to see if it translates to the market place.

I drove a Mercedes with Harmon Kardon system. I was bored and certainly would not have purchased but for the fact it was OEM. That's just me.

The Harman research seems to correlate well with what audiophiles like, though. The main exceptions I can think of are planars, as John Atkinson pointed out in his article. Floyd Toole sheds some light on this in his book -- the Quads (57's?) tested much better in stereo than in mono. And Harman tests in mono. Their speaker positioner also doesn't substitute for the careful setup of an audiophile system, which is particularly crucial with dipoles.

One point that Olive and Toole make, and it's one with which I agree strongly, is that speaker preferences are not solely a matter of taste. In blind tests, subjects with normal hearing routinely pick the speaker that is most accurate. I don't find that very surprising. Of course, we also "choose our poison" to some extent, depending on our listening material and levels and what we value most in reproduced sound. But the notion that people prefer inaccuracy doesn't seem to be true.

I'd draw a distinction, though, between picture-perfect response and accuracy with real-world material. If, say, pop recordings are hyped in the highs, as many are, you're likely to want a speaker that compensates for that.