fsonicsmith,
Excellent comment!
I believe I know just what you are talking about in terms of a "woody" timbre and compensating toward real life.
I'm pretty nuts about correct, organic sounding timbre so that's always been job one for any speaker I have owned. The problem has been for me that instrumental timbre often doesn't sound organic, but more glazed and electronic/plastic through most speaker systems. I had usually found the best I could do was pick a speaker (and with judicious amp choice) that had traits consonant with what I like about real life sounds. A number of speakers I've owned and ones I've liked have had a somewhat "woody" character or timbral tone because that at least imparted an organic quality to sounds that helped many things sound more "real" to me - from acoustic guitars, string instruments, even the "woodiness" of the reed in a saxophone. Or drum sticks, and even to some degree voices. (I'm not talking about some ridiculous level of woody coloration, but more the sense that the sound is made of organic material, vs plastic, steel, and electrons).
The Devores are one of those speakers that to my ears has a canny bit of coloration that is very consonant with how real sounds impress me, so in that sense they often sound more "natural" to me than other strictly more neutral (or other non-neutral) speakers.
The Joseph speakers are more like the Hales speakers I have owned (and still own), where I get the sense of much reduced distortion/coloration revealing timbral qualities. So I find the sound a bit more varied from such speakers. But then, they also sometimes miss some of the particularly papery, organic sense of touch from the Devores, and some of the realistic fullness and weight. So....it's always compromises.