Sorry, but your recollection is wrong. It is true that shortly after the loudspeaker research began in earnest it became clear that Consumer Reports loudspeaker ratings were wrong. But it was more than twenty years before we decided to spend the time and money to directly challenge the Consumer Reports methodology. The history of the events is described in Section 5.7 in the 3rd edition of my book. Sean Olive's benchmark papers were published in 2004:
Olive, S.E. (2004a). “A multiple regression model for predicting loudspeaker preference using objective measurements: part 1 – listening test results”, 116th Convention, Audio Eng. Soc., Preprint 6113.
Olive, S.E. (2004b). “A multiple regression model for predicting loudspeaker preference using objective measurements: part 2 – development of the model”, 117th Convention, Audio Eng. Soc., Preprint 6190.
If consumer reports had used 1/3-octave on axis frequency responses things might have been better, but they used 1/3-octave sound power measurements, processed in a fashion resulting in "accuracy scores" that were grossly misleading. It would be interesting to see how they are doing these days. After Olive's papers were published they ceased loudspeaker reviews, and initiated a program to improve their methods. It was discontinued after a period . . . there was more money to be made testing products other than "hifi" loudspeakers, where people have many other sources of information, even though most of it is unreliable subjectivism.
www.nytimes.com
