This is very timely...


I'm confident that opinions will vary quite a bit with what's written in this article.

https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/features/286-how-audio-writers-are-killing-the-audio-indust...

Some familiar names are present in the comments section.
edgewound
Yeah, that is the dumbest thing I ever heard in audio. I've had people tell me the midrange is perfect and seamless- and this is with tubes.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6xMt6Wj9JE   Sure there are probably some highly efficient speakers out there that have problems. There are also some poorly built tube amps that give tubes a bad rep. But that in no way justifies any of this blanket condemnation that tries to say these things cannot sound good at all. If you want to take that approach then everything everywhere is crap so why bother at all? Just about as wrong a wrong can be. 
I want to add that extremely flat frequency response and extremely low distortions don't have correlation to the real listening. The religious belief in measurements shows the incompetence of the author.
"...hi-end shop in NYC because he was listening to an iPod with little earphones while browsing through the store. I wonder if that was Lyric Audio."

I doubt it. They even sold cheap things.