One good content the MBLs sound really good. The issue I have is that everything played through them has the same signature, diffused soundstage. Not every piece of content should sound that way.
Though I don't discount what you actually heard when you listend to MBLs, that doesn't really match my experience in owning them.
If you let room reflections go wild, then yes I can see the "diffuse soundstage" criticism. But my room is a good sounding room with a nice balance of reflective and absorptive material (designed with an acoustician), and I can modulate the absorption to some degree (additional moveable curtains).
I tend to like a fairly close seating position, 6 feet or so, sometimes 7, from the MBL monitors, so I'm getting somewhat more direct sound than probably many other set ups.
I find they image wonderfully and with a great sense of "surprise" from one track to the next. One track can have close, direct, dry sound hanging right there, well focused in front of me, the next can just expand outside the apparent boundaries of my room.
I'll never forget the first time, almost 2 decades ago, I heard the bigger MBl 101 speakers in a nearfield set up at someone's home, in a dubiously small room. It remains the single most realistic reproduced sound I've ever heard.
As I mentioned earlier: it's not that I'm unfamiliar with other speaker designs. I've owned many and usually have a handful around (currently: Thiel, Spendor, MBL, Hales, Waveform...all of which have their virtues...and I bet a good number of memters here own multiple sets of speakers).