Most agreed upon best speaker?

Actually I hate music.

I just do this to waste my time.....

..NOT!

Age of listeners v age of speakers, is I think relevent, but I would add that a lot depends on the recording practices and electronics that existed in the period of time when the recordings were made and how they would sound on equipment contemporarily available.

I would offer the following observations to support that. We went thru a transition tube/analog with closed box dynamics or horns stuff in the 50s/60's to SS electronics w/ported dynamics, and panels, in the 70's and 80's, to digital and a reassessment of tubes/electrostats/panels and high resolution dynamic speakers in the 90's to the present.

In the early 80's I had full frequency response, phase correct, vented three way boxes, driven by SS and some fairly decent sources. The Telarc digital LP's that came out in the late 70's sounded wonderful, bass drum and all - and I think that is because they were recorded with my kind of system in mind, not Quad 57's. :-) Today, these same recordings, either the LP's or digital, but especially the CD's, sound relatively airless.

I've also found that a lot of the RCA and Merc digital 'remasters', and some of the LP's, can sound a bit thin and/or bright, which I think reflects the status of equipment in the 50's/60's.

In response to the OP's question, the 'best' speaker must judged in relationship to the 'age' of the recorded music and electronics in use when it was recorded IF you interested in the most 'musical' result and you love RCA's and Merc's you want to voice your system accordingly. There is no one size fits all. Apart from personal sonic pleasure that is.

FWIW, that is MHO anyway.

Let's see...just because I have the money to afford more expensive audio products--I don't love music.

Submit: A 12 year old boy who listens to (read: falls asleep to Nancy Wilson, Joanie Sommers (who sang What's New with Big Band arrangements), played his first gig, playing Alto Sax, his heros being Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond, Cannonball Adderlery--and at the age of 13, went to hear Miles Davis live in Louisville at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, even when HE WASN'T ALLOWED TO STAY THERE!!!!, went to a radio station to discuss Jazz with the Jazz jock of the day with Terry Adams of NRBQ, who I thwarted playing with because he played 'crap', not jazz
I, WHAT?, don't love music?

Someone get a hose, and hose this site down...NO ONE, not any reviewer, from Clement Perry to Jon Valin, loves music and audio more than I do!!!!

Each upgrade of my gears made me happy since I could hear more and better sound, and the music sound more musical. I don't know when the series of upgrades would stop. It may never stop until I die or get broke.
It is hard to quantify how much someone loves music and/or sound, but to my wife I appear to be more of a sound lover than a music lover. Even though it upsets me to hear that, well, it is hard to dispute her judgment. I am writing this and listening to Wagner's Tirstan Und Isolde, and I feel short of SOUND from my system. Why don't I just enjoy the music as it is now and forget about upgrades!

"Why don't I just enjoy the music as it is now and forget about upgrades?"

Dammed if I know, but it seems to be a disease, some sort of a masculine thing, that all audiophiles suffer from, at least to some degree.

FWIW, at least it worked for me, I made a point about becoming informed about the music I was playing as well as the performance, etc, - then, when my potential critics arrived and started to launch an attact, ala your wife's, where I could dazzle them with knowledge, they would feel inadequate about their own music knowledge, and leave my obsessions alone. Works for guests as well, just don't try it on a musicologist!

And the side benefit - In the process of acquiring all of this knowledge I acutally enhanced my own enjoyment of the music in the process. Go figure. :-)