Peter, David is an expert and I am so sorry he is not here to share his information to us. I like his audio thinking and I regard his valid experience. thank you for sharing your experience.
what I say is some audiophiles believe "the subjective experience is relative to listener so all audio judgments are not absolute, for example Lagonda prefer MBL, Ron prefer Gryphon, ..." .
the question is who is right? MBL or Gryphon or ... which is better? their answer is we do not have absolute and it depends on taste.
my answer is they are wrong and we can use a valid subjective method for comparison. "the comparison by contrast" method is the key and most impressive expensive modern audio equipments fail to get good score. this is the way you can realize why David
@ddk does not like most modern dead speakers.