This raises the question of sensitivity. In a surround application could they go to sleep and then wake up but with a delay to the output?
Just as a data point, my Genelecs(8351B/8341A) wake up/sleep and stay awake beautifully when connected to an AVR. In fact they do so better than my Neumann KH80s, which can be a little bit finicky when connected to certain channels for some reason.
Maybe I'm wrong looking at the measurements though. From what I've gathered, wider, smooth off axis response and bass extension boost a speakers preference score. Not SPL, newness, or being used in a studio (PMC and ATC come to mind.)
The preference score is a tool for filtering out bad speakers, that's all it is. It's of limited use with speakers as good as the 8351B. It's very unlikely there were any good(by modern standards) coaxials included in the study, and there were exactly 0 speakers predicted by the formula to score >7.1 and only 4 speakers that were rated by testers >7.1 in the entire study. The score also ignores many variables that have been reported to affect preference in real blind testing, like IMD. And of course SPL capability/distortion is a factor in preference, IF YOU TEST IT. The speaker tests in the study were deliberately held at moderate levels so that it wouldn't be tested.
Wideness is actually penalized by the preference score, amusingly, though it wasn't initially intended. Perhaps this will communicate to you that the preference score is poor for evaluating excellent speakers. The idea that wideness is preferred by most is inconclusive. It's a hypothesis advanced by Toole(and others), but it hasn't been studied in isolation, and there seem to be plenty of cases where people legitimately prefer narrower dispersion.
Additionally, this is a stereo-fixation-issue. Wide dispersion is not a meaningful advantage for multi-channel, and multi-channel is flat-out stated to be superior by Toole as well. It puzzles me why people are so quick to jump on the wide dispersion bandwagon, but just skip Toole's statements that multi-channel is technically and subjectively superior to stereo and that the good upmixing algorithms work well.
It's almost as if we all personally pick and choose the arguments we prefer
The 8260A isn't smoother than the 8351B, in fact it has a pretty abrupt woofer transition. You can see this in the power response where it sharply increases, and in the contour map there is bulging just below the crossover rather than perfectly even and gradual transition from controlled directivity to omnidirectional. Also, I think this is a very important frequency range for smoothness, as many key vocal frequencies are in the 100-500hz range. This holds for the 8361A as well, though it is not quite as smooth as the 8351B, it still has a better woofer transition.
Contour Maps:
Basically what I'm saying is, if you like the 8260A, great! But don't say that generalizes to everyone. You put priority on wideness and extension, but if you're using a sub then extension doesn't matter...and smoothness, SPL, and vertical dispersion are relevant attributes. You may not care about SPL and vertical dispersion, but that's not the same thing as the science saying they don't matter. It does not say that. The preference score is very far from a summary of all the science.
The actual speaker designers, themselves accomplished audio researchers, disagree with you on what attributes they wanted to improve. I'm not saying you should always trust speaker designers, but in Genelec's case, I do think they probably know what they're doing... don't you??
I don't want to turn this into a huge back and forth about the 8260A. I think it's a great speaker. But it isn't good enough to justify saying that Genelec made their modern speakers worse somehow. That's just not the case.