Should a reference speaker be neutral, or just great sounding?


I was thinking about something as I was typing about how I've observed a magazine behave, and it occurred to me that I have a personal bias not everyone may agree to.  Here's what I think:
"To call a speaker a reference product it should at the very least be objectively neutral."

However, as that magazine points out, many great speakers are idiosyncratic ideas about what music should sound like in the home, regardless of being tonally neutral.

Do you agree?  If a speaker is a "reference" product, do you expect it to be neutral, or do you think it has to perform exceptionally well, but not necessarily this way?
erik_squires
I feel you have monitor speakers which just produce the music in the studio .But Reference should be you.....r go to speakers that give you the highs ,the mids and the lows that make you happy...
Since all tastes are different and all speakers are compromises (due to the tastes of the individual who designed them), I go with the one(s) that sound great to me.

All the best,
Nonoise
Practically reference with this stuff is a pretty useless term though it is good for everyone to know their own personal reference when they hear it otherwise one may flounder chasing unknowns.
It seems that you are having trouble achieving neutral sound Erik Squires. Hopefully you will now concede that the SNR1 arent really reference speakers after all. Neutrality is indeed not easy to achieve. 
Wasn’t it Harman that did a lot of speaker tests where the speakers with the flattest response were picked as the best sounding? No matter if it was professional listeners or Joe off the street.

John Dunlavy interview.
https://www.stereophile.com/interviews/163/index.html