You might be correct about that. Some speakers have a "sound", and I regard that as a defect. I believe that adequate measurements will show these characteristics, but possibly you do not agree.
Although I admire all three, I do not admire Diana Damrau, Rachel Duckett and Sabine Devieilhe equally. I would like a recording that allows me to hear ... as close as possible ... the characteristics of each one. It is my opinion that an accurate system lets me know what is actually on those recordings ... warts and all. By the same token, I do not appreciate a speaker that adds an obvious "sound" that is not on the recording, if it can possibly be avoided. This applies especially to female voices.
These goals have been the aim of speaker (and recording) development since the 1930s. We're not perfect yet, but each year we get closer and closer.
So ... if I might ask ... how do you know what's on the recording and what's not on the recording?
Not sure 100% that I got your question correctly but I'll try to answer.
The premise is that I'm nobody, pretty new into the audiophile world, just somebody who's been recording and mixing for a long time, since this is my job so my experience is based on what I've seen with my eyes and heard with my own ears.
I've been to quite a few studios around and lucky enough to be also in a couple of Top studios. All these studios had great speakers, very accurate, from Full Range to Near-Field. Despite this, all of those speakers sound significantly different. So if we consider one of those systems accurate then...should we consider all those other speakers not accurate?
At Abbey Road they had B&W 800 series for a long time, those speakers have a characteristic sound not hard to recognise when compared to other great systems. Just a few days ago, for an Hifi Event, I had the chance to listen to a couple of Custom Made state of the art speakers, for the selling price of only 180K Euros: the sound was huge, amazing but I couldn't say it was more accurate than other speakers I heard, maybe very much detailed? Probably. Same day, on its smaller and cheaper version of the same system (like around 10K) I listened to "Walk in the wild side" by Lou Reed and for the first time I noticed some kinda room sound on the shaker, something that I never noticed before. It was very emotional. So which one was accurate?
What I see in the reality is not an ideal line that converge towards a single mythical point of listening neutrality, what I see its parallel lines where each speaker shares a certain level of accuracy and balance but each in their own way.
A senior engineer at Air Studios, said: "You don't have to listen to the speakers, you need to learn how to listen
through the speakers..." When you work in a studio you don't compare the speakers in front of you to an ideal sound that you kinda
own in a better speaker, you compare the speaker's sound to the sound that you have memory of, in your own studio or home.
And we end up how we started, the real accuracy is in our experience. At least in my personal honest opinion.
Sometimes it looks like listeners are looking for an accuracy that who made those records didn't have.
Apart from that....some records have been really recorded as if with the intent of wanting to take a photograph of the moment, in that specific space, room and moment, so the approach of wanting to "see" that same picture through your speakers is a beautiful approach and also gives recognition to a certain way of making records, so its something that I like and respect.
