If you re-read my posts, you'll note several things I point out or at least allude to, beyond the oversimplified characterization of "not subjective": (1) We h

If you re-read my posts, you'll note several things I point out or at least allude to, beyond the oversimplified characterization of "not subjective": (1) We have an objective science that disambiguates and understands differences that are subjective versus universal preferences in speakers (to some reasonable threshold of population universality; e.g. maybe you find some 0.0000001% population that prefers horrible screeching noises added to any audio content, but arguing for this as an important dimension of subjective variability that we need to incorporate into hardware is I hope clearly absurd). (2) The vast majority of subjective variability relates to differences in frequency response, which are extremely easy and cheap to adjust in software -- no need to cycle through many multi-thousand dollar headphones or speakers just in hopes of finding one that suits your preferred frequency response target. (3) Almost every kind of imperfection that can't be corrected via frequency response tuning (e.g. undistorted SPL capability, THD, IMD, off-axis smoothness and similarity to on-axis for speakers, power handling and dynamic compression, etc.) turns out to be almost universally disliked versus when that imperfection does not exist. (4) Once frequency response balance is factored out either via custom EQ or a "mass market" target curve (which for headphones is indeed more of a compromise, but for speakers is not even remotely a subjective matter, since there are mountains of scientific evidence over decades proving over and over again that the preferred anechoic frequency response for speakers is flat, i.e. the mathematically perfect identity function), which naturally yields a preferred in-room target curve of a smoothly declining slope -- very little (if any) subjective variability remains (e.g. bass boost or treble tilt to taste is one such example). (5) To be clear, some subjective variability does remain, but it mostly relates to head fit and comfort (for headphones), and for speakers is much more nuanced and tends to relate to beam width and height differences. In both cases, the science is capable of examining these precisely, not in some kind of vague or hand-wavy woo woo sense. Lastly, there is always some need to make some coarse adjustments to bass and treble when listening to older recordings or recordings which were mastered to a non-neutral reference curve (as they should be, else it's impossible to ever reconstruct what was intended) -- but this is not so much a matter of listener preference as it is correcting for mixing/mastering errors in older or lower quality tracks.