In my opinion the goal is to recreate as closely as possible the illusion of a live performance, and this implies taking psychoacoustics into account. Just because something can be easily measured doesn't mean it's relevant. If low-order harmonic distortion is inaudible, then an impressive-looking measurement in that area is irrevelant.
To give a more common example, as long as we measure the on-axis anechoic response but listen to the power response, there will be a disconnect between frequency response measurements and subjective perception.
Following this line of thought, the most accurate loudspeaker is the one that comes the closest to reproducing the perception of a live performance. We don't presently have a metric that accurately predicts subjective preference - indeed, the audio industry has thus far resisted the adoption of such a metric presumably because there would be far more losers than winners among manufacturers. What we'd need is a psychoacoustically-weighted metric that takes into account the relative audible significance of everything the device does to the signal (the "transfer function).
Of course I have my opinion as to which characteristics are likely to result in a speaker that closely approximates the perception of a live performance, and frankly some of these characteristics are unlikely to show up in published measurements. Among these obscure characteristics that I think matter are dynamic linearity (lack of power compression or at least uniform power compression across the frequency range) and radiation pattern smoothness (related to but not the same thing as power response).
I don't know of any speaker that really "does it all", but my personal leanings are generally towards planars and horns rather than direct-radiator dynamics - even though the latter are more likely to produce impressive-looking conventional measurements.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer
To give a more common example, as long as we measure the on-axis anechoic response but listen to the power response, there will be a disconnect between frequency response measurements and subjective perception.
Following this line of thought, the most accurate loudspeaker is the one that comes the closest to reproducing the perception of a live performance. We don't presently have a metric that accurately predicts subjective preference - indeed, the audio industry has thus far resisted the adoption of such a metric presumably because there would be far more losers than winners among manufacturers. What we'd need is a psychoacoustically-weighted metric that takes into account the relative audible significance of everything the device does to the signal (the "transfer function).
Of course I have my opinion as to which characteristics are likely to result in a speaker that closely approximates the perception of a live performance, and frankly some of these characteristics are unlikely to show up in published measurements. Among these obscure characteristics that I think matter are dynamic linearity (lack of power compression or at least uniform power compression across the frequency range) and radiation pattern smoothness (related to but not the same thing as power response).
I don't know of any speaker that really "does it all", but my personal leanings are generally towards planars and horns rather than direct-radiator dynamics - even though the latter are more likely to produce impressive-looking conventional measurements.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer