Very well put Peter.
unless you played in, or conducted an orchestra, or spent a lot of time listening going to orchestra concerts, are any of us really qualified to judge an audio system
I don't know that being a musician is any better of a qualification. I have run into several musicians and studio engineers that thought the M80 was harsh and unatural.
Maybe they just had crappy rooms. You would think a sound engineer would be able to separate the room from the speakers though.
To me the bottom line is that if you measure just the speaker, the M80 is very linear across its entire frequency; much less than +-3db for most of the range. It also has excellent off axis linearity. Physics has no opinion. Either the speaker is linear or it isn't.
Even the rolled off high end response that most people seem to prefer is coloured sound.
are any of us really qualified to judge an audio system
In the end, the only speaker system anyone is qualified to
judge is their own. Everywhere else, the best we can do is offer qualified opinion.
