Oh, you don't need a Unicorn speaker. Any violin, guitar, singer or even yes cowbell will do. That's your gold standard: the whole recording/playback chain recreates the original event.
Speakers being the last link in the chain, so many opportunities to mess up the sound long before it gets to the speaker, even if the speaker is perfect its hard to tell. Which by the way slays the old "spend the most on the speaker" canard. Yet still it seems to be true its the easiest one to spot flaws in, so maybe there's a reason its still around even though it can be proven not to work very well.
The thing about speakers, there's way too much focus on sins of omission. We measure frequency and say see, bass is rolled off, not good. Or the highs, same thing. When in reality it turns out to be very easy to enjoy living with such a speaker- if it does a bunch of other things well. Sins of commission though, if the box was poorly designed so it adds a woody hooty character to everything, most people won't stand that at all no matter how perfectly flat the response.
What this all means of course is speakers are no different than anything else. You just go and listen and get the one that sounds the best. That is after all why we buy this stuff, to listen to it. If there's anything naive it would have to be the idea there's any other way of going about it.
Speakers being the last link in the chain, so many opportunities to mess up the sound long before it gets to the speaker, even if the speaker is perfect its hard to tell. Which by the way slays the old "spend the most on the speaker" canard. Yet still it seems to be true its the easiest one to spot flaws in, so maybe there's a reason its still around even though it can be proven not to work very well.
The thing about speakers, there's way too much focus on sins of omission. We measure frequency and say see, bass is rolled off, not good. Or the highs, same thing. When in reality it turns out to be very easy to enjoy living with such a speaker- if it does a bunch of other things well. Sins of commission though, if the box was poorly designed so it adds a woody hooty character to everything, most people won't stand that at all no matter how perfectly flat the response.
What this all means of course is speakers are no different than anything else. You just go and listen and get the one that sounds the best. That is after all why we buy this stuff, to listen to it. If there's anything naive it would have to be the idea there's any other way of going about it.