Andy - that point of "hotter than they should be" is of great interest. It amazes me that there are no real standards regarding target speaker response - "what should be". The scientific work being done at JBL, the Canadian Research Lab, etc. centers on user preference. Think about that. Record producers second-guess end user equipment and preferences and . . . it's sometimes called "the wild west".
Jim's position was philosophical as much as anything else: that the speaker just like other components should replicate its input signal. At the time that position was quite novel, even controversial, but over elapsed time it has become fairly standard practice with the largest deviations being bass level.
I am not a Vandersteen expert, but it seems that over the years his products migrated from very full bass and steadily falling treble toward flat frequency response, along with KEF, the Canadians and many other design houses. I suggest that a Thiel compared with a modern Van would measure quite similarly, which was not true in distant years past.
The puzzle is not solvable until everybody makes recordings balanced for flat system playback, like Audioquest, Chesky, Reference Recordings and similar knowledgeable producers do. Until that time, it is far safer to balance a speaker rich and forgiving so it doesn't exacerbate recording problems. Jim actually disdained making such a compromise, citing its irrationality, and Thiel took it on the chin in many ways.
