How to meaningfully audition speakers??

I think personal taste rules the day in this discussion. An analogy I think might be useful (or not) regards guitar amp speakers...the tonal coloration that exists with various brands becomes extremely important to a guitar player with any reasonable amount of experience, and I've found that taste changes and evolves usually. If a home hifi speaker seems to be delivering the goods in your system and YOU think it's great, other people's opinions should become moot. And I rarely use the word "moot."

Well, at least you are not saying "mute" as my dear wife insists on saying :-). But, while I agree that "personal taste rules the day", the concept as an analogy is flawed. True, guitar players choose an amp/speaker based on its tonal colorations as a way to create his "sound". But, isn't the goal of a speaker in a playback system to then recreate the sound of that player's chosen amp/speaker's intrinsic sound? The goal in this case is fidelity, not choice; or, at least, that is the traditional definition of "hi-fi".

Frogman, I agree as a general principle that an "audiophile" grade rig should be able to create the real thing as closely as possible. True "fidelity" I suppose?? But I am dubious that even the very best rig (and all that the term entails) can do more than approach the aspirational standard. Further, it is my experience that each incremental improvement is coming at a cost that increases at a rate that is disproportionate to the incremental improvement.

At this stage of the game, I have become more circumspect about what any component change can really achieve. Instead, my goal is to assemble a system whose individual components are compatible and whose musical presentation is engaging and enjoyable. Further, as a number of folks have mentioned above, even if one is able to assemble a perfect rig, the quality of source material is spotty.

Last point -- an obvious truism I think. This OP was about how to meaningfully audition speakers. I was hoping for some new insight that I may have overlooked. It seems that the bottom line is that it's a very difficult thing to do given the state of our hobby. And that goes to other components as well. My experience has been buy pre-owned top grade components, try them, keep what works and sell what doesn't.

Best and thanks for all the comments.

BIF

Frogman, you have arrived at the nub of the issue.
In my experience, I had a very high end audio shop in the late 80's, and subsequent experiences with "audiophiles", very few people want high fidelity.
Most want what they think or would like music to sound like and this mostly reflects their personality. Some want razor sharp images and warp speed on everything, others want a polite inoffensive sound. Some want gut wrenching bass.
Very few would be happy with an accurate sound ( of a studio recording ) or live music in their living room.
This fundamental driver of what a person wants from an audio system, which is NOT high fidelity, I believe is almost certainly the root cause of many of the debates in this forum.