How can someone can passed a judgement on any speakers in an uncontrolled and untreated room?
This the the proof almost no one lived through an acoustic room transformation...
A too warmish, too low centered speakers cannot be elevated to the "lark ascending highs" for sure; in this case if they are perhaps not bad but really are not so good speakers....
But a too harsh, too cold and too detailed speakers with fatiguing highs is most of the times the results of an undercontrolled or undertreated room...I already detected many times horrible unnnatural harsh sound coming from the costlier speakers it seems...No way that was the room unbeknownst to the listener boasting about them....
It is easy to put a fatiguing speaker on the other end of the spectrum if it is not a design defect....Most very costly speakers are not defect design....For sure little box speakers with no bass are fatiguing without redemption... But Focal speakers need a room for example we cannot fault the design....
Then most really should put their critic with more caution....
"Taste" is the audio word signifying most of the times i dont know what i speak about...
A natural timbre instrumental sound coming from some speakers are always what musicians and true audiophiles wanted and it has nothing to do with "taste".... It is always a relatively "objective-subjective" experience with the musicians in an orchestra and more of a consensus among them and an habit than a particular "taste"....It is a "learned" experience all along their musical life.... Not a taste....