I don't see the argument in this notion; it just contradicts mine without the provision of a new aspect. The new science, 2034-A standard namely, is deliberately based on 'listening' and, mind you, unquestioned 'preference', but in that case with some statistics. Reiterated, nothing else. It used common, tastefully selected 'revealing' recordings.
I think you're getting a few things mixed up. The CTA-2034-A is a standard method for measuring (in-home) speakers and reporting data (using standardized methods) - nothing more. This standard does not specify at all how a loudspeaker should be tuned or designed and has nothing to do with listening tests.
At most, one could say that listening tests have imposed the need for such a standard, since a correlation between subjective evaluation of loudspeakers and their "complete" (hor and ver) measurements has been established.
CTA-2034-A is a powerful "tool" for loudspeaker design and analysis. It extends the before used non standardized evaluation methods (on-axis, angular frequency response measurements, sound power, SP DI, sonograms, ...) with standardized evaluation methods like LW, ER (hor + ver), PIR, ERDI (hor + ver),...
A completely different aspect is the connection between measurements and subjective evaluations of loudspeakers. Toole has already established this in 1986 with
Loudspeaker Measurements and Their Relationship to Listener Preferences: Part 2 and it was an established view among a large portion of amateur speaker designers 15 years ago.
In detail, there are quite different opinions regarding the connection between measurements and subjective evaluations, but has long been accepted by many as fundamentally true.
This only means that already at the time of the totem-acoustics-rainmaker release, the connection between measurements and subjective hearing sensation was known. Whether one accepts the results as well-founded is something else, there the opinions differ until today (however, I am not aware of any study that disproves correlation of measurements and subjective evaluation).
How the designer of the Totem-Rainmaker speaker has tuned these in the end is secondary for me, he had already at that time analysis methods (on-axis FR, angular FR, SP, DI, ...) which are comparable with today's CTA-2034-A standard, so not having the CTA-2034-A standard ist no excuse
Not to use these analysis and design possibilities was then (and is now) up to everyone.