Perhaps, the best discussion on this topic.
Andrew is great, super knowledgeable and talented, and he's been very helpful over the years. I've owned speakers he designed over the decades, before I ever knew who he was, as well as Pioneer and ELAC after we became industry acquaintances thanks to audio shows.
Over lunch at a show, Andrew once shared with me that when the Beats brand was being thought up, he was approached to be the designer for their early models. He declined, the rest is ignominious history... headphones don;t need to sound good to sell well. They need to be marketed. It's a story involving Silicon Valley, Wall Street, executives bent on market domination, and a turn of events that resulting in Dr. Dre becoming a billionaire and Apple getting into the headphones game.
I guess the counterpoint to the notion that measurements won't tell you if you like how music sounds is Sean Olive (Senior Research Fellow at Harman, for those who are not familiar), who says that measurements in fact do closely correlate to whether or not someone will like the sound of a speaker.
My experience (thus far) is that personal taste 100% creates a wide spectrum of responses to how speakers sound. Headphones, too. Visit a few dozen rooms at an audio show and discuss how you thought the systems sounded with other attendees and it becomes clear that the adage "preference beats reference" is largely axiomatic.
