For the absolute best, cost is no object? Genelec 8351B + W371A, Revel F328Be, Dutch & Dutch 8C, Kii Three BXT, and many others.
But you really don’t need to pay this much unless you want the absolute best quality AND quantity (capable of going extremely loud, which is an engineering challenge that requires expensive solutions). You may find the “Speaker Attr Comparison” tab here useful to explore the price vs performance spectrum: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe...
I would recommend learning to read the individual reviewed speaker measurements though, since there definitely is some information lost when compressing these incredibly rich measurements down to a single number, and the science still has some room to improve since there are some dimensions (e.g. the importance of low distortion at high SPL, or beam width) that this fairly old aggregate score model does not currently incorporate.
There definitely is some subjective taste involved, but the important thing is that we can measure these dimensions objectively and understand which is subjective (and why), and which is not a matter of subjective personal taste. We can explore these personal preference tradeoffs without completely surrendering to the subjective nonsense that ‘anything goes’.
For example, it looks like the most subjective factor remaining in speakers is the overall beam width — whether you want a more directional sound, or a more omnidirectional one that fills the room more broadly. This topic is at the edge/fringe of the established science, but the general consensus here is that the objective best would be a multichannel surround sound system of medium beam speakers, where you can either replay recordings meant for multichannel systems, or for traditional stereo recordings at least dynamically select how frontal vs surround you want a particular stereo recoding to be reproduced (just as you can e.g. easily adjust bass boost to taste depending on what you’re listening to, if it wasn’t recorded/mixed the way you like). But given that most people want to minimize the number and size of speakers in their room, there does tend to be a practical challenge of preference here if you can only pick one style (wide vs medium vs narrow beam) for stereo recordings (which while not an ideal format, constitute 99.999% of all music people enjoy).
We have top-line Genelecs in our home theatre (with a custom center channel horn for dialog). But most "audiophiles" won't like them even though they are as accurate a speaker as you can get.
As a 58-year-old, the sound I like when listening to music is probably a bit off from "accurate". It's a combination of trying to match the sound I grew up hearing (which admittedly was colored by the way records were mastered in the 70s!) and the fact that my high-end hearing isn't what it used to be. I think considerations like that are what drive "audiophile" audio.
Plus, when you get to be 50+ and have some money to spare, there's a cool factor. A preposterous turntable is just like a luxury wrist-watch. You don't buy a $80,000 watch because it tells better time....
If a $80k watch or turntable makes you happy, then that’s great for you. The reason the science matters here is because most people don’t necessarily have a ton of money to waste, and aren’t necessarily trying to recreate a historical reproduction of some old records (along with all their flaws); most people just want to listen to their favorite music and have it sound the best it can for a reasonable price. This is where the science has the definitive answers, with the potential exception of really old recordings with various quirks due to the lack of well-established audio recording and reproduction science at the time. But digitizing such old works involves some creative art in trying to recreate the authentic old sound when played on modern speakers, and this can be done well (and is done well, in some but not all cases).
But for example, there is no magical difference between a good studio monitor and good audiophile speakers. The differences are well understood and easily measurable. Studio monitors are often more neutral and flat, but also may tend to have a narrower beam, while audiophile speakers often have wider beams and perhaps some coloration like bass boost and treble boost or reduction.
What’s great about the science is it removes all this subjective guesswork. For example, my Genelec 8351B’s out of the box sound too bright for my tastes. But thankfully their built-in DSP allows me not only to calibrate them to perfection to my room, but tune the overall sonic signature to my preference (a gentle downward slope, for a warmer sound). The beauty of good speakers is you can do this in software, rather than buying a different pair of speakers.
About the only thing you can’t tune in software with good speakers is the beam width (assuming there are no flaws like directivity mismatches, distortion, etc. which can never be fixed in DSP). And that’s why e.g. my Genelec still sound different from my Revel speakers: the Genelec are medium width beam, while the Revel are very wide.
Depending on the music genre, this matters. I prefer the wider beam sound on older music and more traditional “audiophile” style music, so for that I tend to prefer the Revels. But for newer music, I and almost everyone else prefers the Genelec’s presentation. It’s important that this is not some subjectivist mystery: it completely makes sense, and through this understanding we are empowered to engineer or select the best speaker for the job without making it unattainably expensive or impossibly convoluted via subjective claims.
But you really don’t need to pay this much unless you want the absolute best quality AND quantity (capable of going extremely loud, which is an engineering challenge that requires expensive solutions). You may find the “Speaker Attr Comparison” tab here useful to explore the price vs performance spectrum: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe...
I would recommend learning to read the individual reviewed speaker measurements though, since there definitely is some information lost when compressing these incredibly rich measurements down to a single number, and the science still has some room to improve since there are some dimensions (e.g. the importance of low distortion at high SPL, or beam width) that this fairly old aggregate score model does not currently incorporate.
There definitely is some subjective taste involved, but the important thing is that we can measure these dimensions objectively and understand which is subjective (and why), and which is not a matter of subjective personal taste. We can explore these personal preference tradeoffs without completely surrendering to the subjective nonsense that ‘anything goes’.
For example, it looks like the most subjective factor remaining in speakers is the overall beam width — whether you want a more directional sound, or a more omnidirectional one that fills the room more broadly. This topic is at the edge/fringe of the established science, but the general consensus here is that the objective best would be a multichannel surround sound system of medium beam speakers, where you can either replay recordings meant for multichannel systems, or for traditional stereo recordings at least dynamically select how frontal vs surround you want a particular stereo recoding to be reproduced (just as you can e.g. easily adjust bass boost to taste depending on what you’re listening to, if it wasn’t recorded/mixed the way you like). But given that most people want to minimize the number and size of speakers in their room, there does tend to be a practical challenge of preference here if you can only pick one style (wide vs medium vs narrow beam) for stereo recordings (which while not an ideal format, constitute 99.999% of all music people enjoy).