Beyond pure specs, do you think subjectively there is an ultimatel consensus on what speakers sound good? Everything we've been talking about here seems to indicate that preference is the driving factor.
No, it doesn't. The best scientific work on this says that when 'preference' is based ONLY on listening, then people tend to prefer speakers with certain objectively measurable characteristics, particularly, a good 'listening window' measurement (off-axis response similar to on-axis response, and both relatively flat across the audible spectrum). This means that there is an idea of objectively 'good' loudspeaker sound that people tend to converge on.
The same work shows that when 'preference' is based on 'sighted' listening -- where the listener knows the brand, price, etc -- then non-audio factors bias the preference for sound.
You can read about these in Floyd Toole's white papers --
http://www.harmanaudio.com/all_about_audio/audio_art_science.pdf
