Listen to Sean, he knows of what he speaks when it comes to this... :-)
Onhwy61, I don't have personal experience with all of the above speakers, including the 3.3's, but I must agree with Mejames when you propose that the speaker differences will be meaningless if listening to rock music. I think I know what you're driving at, and yes, there are some possible differences - in all parts of a system - that might be more meaningful or easily perceivable when reproducing naturally recorded acoustic music, but those qualities will still translate, to one degree or another, into the sonic result no matter what type of music is played, especially if well-recorded (although these differences may not confer upon studio rock an advantage that better correlates to any remembered 'absolute sound reality', instead just being matters of preference and accuracy to the source). There is also a flip-side to this issue, in that reproduction of naturally recorded acoustic music will not always stress certain aspects of a system in ways that will necessarily tell you everthing you need to know about how it will perform on rock. So for me, I always audition with natural acoustic music because I want to know the fine details of a component's performance envelope, but I also use rock as well, because that's what I listen to 75% of the time, and for a speaker especially it has to pass both tests.
Onhwy61, I don't have personal experience with all of the above speakers, including the 3.3's, but I must agree with Mejames when you propose that the speaker differences will be meaningless if listening to rock music. I think I know what you're driving at, and yes, there are some possible differences - in all parts of a system - that might be more meaningful or easily perceivable when reproducing naturally recorded acoustic music, but those qualities will still translate, to one degree or another, into the sonic result no matter what type of music is played, especially if well-recorded (although these differences may not confer upon studio rock an advantage that better correlates to any remembered 'absolute sound reality', instead just being matters of preference and accuracy to the source). There is also a flip-side to this issue, in that reproduction of naturally recorded acoustic music will not always stress certain aspects of a system in ways that will necessarily tell you everthing you need to know about how it will perform on rock. So for me, I always audition with natural acoustic music because I want to know the fine details of a component's performance envelope, but I also use rock as well, because that's what I listen to 75% of the time, and for a speaker especially it has to pass both tests.