Quote Originally Posted by theaudiohobby
If you are interested in the definitive commentary on their correlation or lack of, I suggest you read some of Dr. Floyd's O'Toole comments and their associated AES papers, one of their studies says



On a side note, a lot of folk's impressions about scientific based testing is based on what they read in consumer magazines and is really the wrong place to look, they are consumer orientated and rigorous scientific testing is simply beyond their scope, certain parameters are simply not measured due to cost or brevity. However a knowledgeable eye can still learn a great deal about a speaker behaviour from some of the detailed treatments.
Consumers Reports had the advantage of providing objective data but not enough to be very useful. One criticism has been that they did not take directivity into account and this was made long ago by none other than Julian Hirsch. As well, as you point out, the research has shown that 1/3 octave resolution is insufficient and that 1/10 octave or better is needed. Floyd Toole's comments on CR reports can be found on page 20 of the White Paper you linked:

http://www.harman.com/wp/pdf/AudioScience.pdf