I think the larger question that you raise in your post, whether intentional or not, is if the science can accurately quantify not only the listening experience, but the equipment responsible for bringing us that experience as well -- not just limited to speakers but to the entire audio chain. I believe this is at the heart of the disagreement between the objectivist subjectivist groups. Though traditionally, speakers have been one area where there is little disagreement over the measured and perceived audible differences of audio equipment, I remember encountering a self proclaimed objectivist on these boards who's position was that there was no such thing as speaker "timbre". Even when I agreed with him that timbre is in a sense "distortion" in that it does distort the original audio signal, he absolutely refused to accept that any good quality speaker could have timbre. It didn't seem to matter to him when I pointed out that his much touted use of an equalizer was correcting for frequency response problems which, according to him, shouldn't exist in good quality speakers. It also didn't matter when I pointed out that no amount of EQing was capable of making horn loaded speakers sound like say... electrostatics, and that this was due to the specific timbre of each type of speaker. He wasn't hearing any of this. As far as he was concerned timbre was just a fancy way of saying "distortion" and that from his point of view any distortion of the source signal, save for output levels, was undesirable and shouldn't be tollerated by those buying speakers. So he was understandably pissed when I pointed out that his use of an EQ was a direct alteration (distortion) of the source signal prior to it every arriving at the speakers; and that unless he was using a very expensive EQ, he was like creating other sonic anomalies that he wasn't even aware of. From his objectivist point of view, everything he needed to know about his system and the listening experience could be evaluated and quantified by "correcting" the frequency response of his speakers. I doubt that there are many objectivist here who would agree with him, but IMO it is an example of how we get locked into our positions and simply won't budge. My position is that the raw data may not ALWAYS be able to quantify the experience or the equipment; and that because of this, we shouldn't sumarily dismiss all "claims" of perceived differences as being false. I understand that the reasonable response is to say "then why not use some objective test method to determine this instead of relying of subjective "biased" means?" -- and I agree. But I also believe that it is possible for the test methodology to be insufficient to completely evaluate the experience and the equipment, even though on face value, it may seem obvious that it is. I just raise the posibillity that it may not be and that in the future, as even better test methods are developed, some of the things which have been dismissed as pure audio myth may find some scientific foundation. Personally, I think it would be beneficial for those in both "camps" to get a healthy dose of humility and to say "We just don't know for sure."

My rant for the day.

Q