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

i prefer to buy used save at least 50%+


You will hardly ever find SEAS MTM/ 2 way with Excel drivers for sale used. Those are keepers, 
Sure there are K's of speakers used,,,but is our objective a  good cheap price,,, or  should our goal be <superior> sounding. 
??

We will never hear nor achieve it. Get over it.


No no no, You completely miss my point.
Neutral = the least distortyion/coloring. 
Look B&W are world famous, folks adore B&W, 
My opinions does not count, I really hate all B&W's,. The sound is british and very colored,
Like dark grey, brownish, smoky, hazy,  just way too dense in midrange. which is where 80-90% of our music lies.
Neutarl is The Ideal,, and we seek  as close as we can attain to that goal,, 
Look my new xovers are in the works for the Seas, Lets see what Mundorf does to the Excel. This might be a winning team = higher up Mt Everest. Sure I will not attain that peak,,as i do not have K's of $'s to buy what I know will bring me to that peak,,and thats not my style,, I am not a  materialist, 
Once the xovers  are completed and then its onto the Vishay Zfoil resistors for the Jadis DPL preamp, 
Maybe a  few new resistors for the cayin CD17 Mark1, and I'm done. 
Thats my ideal, and I'd say its a  Class A Reference system, which equals others costing XXXXX as much.
Throwing money at this hobby does not always equate with high fidelity. Lets get that straight now.  and stock components are , nothing more than stock, average parts, In order to raise the bar you have to gut the unit and employ world class parts. 
Upgardes with world class parts,  are critical for superior neutral hi fidelity. 
Your average speaker lab, installs average parts = never will be a  world class speaker.
Lets get that straight now.

This is a great question.  From a purely philosophic perspective, I would agree that you would want a speaker that has a perfectly flat frequency response from 20hz to 20khz and compare deviations in terms of sound profile.  If everyone had this as a baseline and new what this sounded like, reviews would be exponentially more valuable.  

However, even if you found this speaker, it would most likely not behave that way in your room.  Your choice in amplification and source is going to alter its sound profile.  And finally, it may not be to your liking.  Just because something is conceptually ideal, doesn't mean it is your preference.  Additionally, wouldn't use a speaker of that sort to evaluate a 300B SET.  

Philosophically, I get it.  In practice, it might be better to choose a speaker in every BestBuy as your "reference" so that people have a common, mainstream point of comparison.  

I fully agree with audioquest4life response from above. Also, consider what speaker was used in the recording studio(s), especially in the past. I've seen most all studios use Yamaha NS-10 speakers to monitor the mix. IMHO those speakers do not sound great but they translate well. Meaning what you hear on those will closely resemble what you hear on a tabletop radio, home stereo... Those are used for near field monitoring. As for main monitoring in a studio, in the 70's JBL was a mainstay like the 4311's or 4412's. Going further back for main monitors the Altec 9844a was a standard. Today I see lots of big studios using custom made main monitors based on the design of the 9844a. Also, today for near field monitoring I see Genelec speakers most often.