Welcome, John, and thank you for a well thought out post offering a different view--it is appreciated. It's easy to get caught up in the which speaker, or component is "better" argument, after all, most of us want our stuff to be as good as can be. Maybe a more constructive way to look at it is to think of speaker A being "different" from speaker B, rather than better. Like you said, the "better than" argument may tend to step on others' toes, sometimes without meaning to.
This is why i abhor the use of the term "upgrade" most especially when it is applied to the more expensive or latest speaker design vs. less expensive or previous models.
Having listened to a handful of different speakers myself, although not in a double blind test, the one thing I've gathered from it all is the similarly good descriptive that Ian spoke about.
I share Ian's idea for tanking the terms "similarly good".
Just let people figure it out on their own.
