Analytical or Musical Which way to go?

"Most good marriages have traits in common and most bad marriages are very different from each other"

Same with audio, though it may not be measurable.

No one denies there are good sounding speakers that also measure well. The question is why do some speaker measure well yet sound poor.Why are there good sounding speakers that measure poorly. The debate lingers.

I think one reason is, measuring a speaker is an extremely difficult task. If you look at the spec of a typical $1k speaker, the distortion figures mentioned will mostly be <1%. How is it measured ? Especially after one implements multiple drivers in a cabinet with added crossovers !! If it really is less than 1% then it clearly is not enough. May be our ears dont like distortion beyond 0.01%, so 1% distortion is 100 times more than what we it takes to sound "correct".
Or, may be the distortion pattern is very uneven even though it is less than 1%.

The point is when a designer doesnt have as good an ear for music as a penchant for numbers, he can only make a good speaker by fluke. On the other hand if a designer has a decent ear but not enough technical expertise he can only make a speaker which is "nice", at the max one can see a camp following his product but not beyond that. Truly great speakers result only when a great pair of ears work with a great brain in tandem. Those speakers measure great, sound great and are actually truly neutral. Unfortunately most such speakers dont come up in the hifi shows and scream "buy me". They are a bit like God, if you are passionate enough and seek them you will not only reach them but also be rewarded with a sound which is a bit like heaven, everything the way it should be.

"Truly great speakers result only when a great pair of ears work with a great brain in tandem."

Bingo!

Gregadd -

Sorry, my post above is likely out of your context and "flavored" with my own presumptions. It makes it seem as if you are somehow in "trouble" with your questions, which I have no right to assume nor was it my true intention. I guess I simply wanted to instill the feeling of being less at odds with prevailing theories on speaker design and marketing, and cue up the more personal approach to, and trust in sound and music itself; get rid of marketing retorics and price hierarchy, and see their jobs as befitting themselves. Something like that..

Phusis - I get your point.

I read spec/measurements. I read reviews. My ears are the final arbiter. As they must be. The question of course is what is my /standard/reference. I hope it's live music.

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.

Its true that there is no accounting for taste. But taste has nothing to do with human hearing/perceptual rules, which are common to all humans. IOW if you have two speakers and one adheres to human perceptual rules much better than the other one, even in a blind test humans will be able to pick it out.

They may not all like the same music though :)