They are much less offensive than other speakers on poor recordings. This too is not a positive attribute. I think that this is the main reason we all preferred the more linear sound of OTLs on these speakers.
One of the S'Phile reviewers recently said something worthy of quoting-"If you have to play only great recordings for your system to sound great, it's time to change your system" (or something very close). While I am glad to see you now say that these are your opinions and not fact, your initial post and even the bold-faced sentence come across as statements of fact.
In this case "musical" translates to colored. All you need do is compare this series of speaker with other types of designs to hear exactly what they portray that is not in the original signal. Not to say that this type of sound doesnt have its place and certainly its fans, but if you judge a speaker by how well it recreates the original signal these are a failure on numerous fronts.
You touched, purposefully or unwittingly, on a subject of much legitimate debate. Classical music fans love to argue that an optimum loudspeaker should be capable of recreating the sound they hear in their favorite row and seat in their favorite music hall but in the real world no transducer or speaker system known to mankind can do that and the very "model/conceit" goes flying out the window when the music was created and preserved for future playback in a studio.
And then comes the unfortunate truth that speakers with perfectly flat and extended frequency response and dispersion characteristics can (and often do) sound boring. You are giving up your spare time to relax and enjoy, not examine and study as if in a laboratory hunched down over a microscope. Look at it this way-why do headphones which are capable of perfectly flat frequency response, no room interaction, and no cross-overs still implement some variation of the Harmon Curve? The answer, in case you don't know, is that they better enable the BRAIN to perceive a recreation of the real event and they sound better.
And finally comes the reality (my version of reality?) that every audio system is an amalgamation of compromises from source to transducers. My point is simple; lighten up, relax, and have fun. Does your system make you wish you were young again and wailing on the guitar in front of a crowd? Does it make you want to get up and dance? The O/96's do that, better than my O/93's. I am currently strongly considering a pair of Volti Rival SE's. Talk about having fun, it is Greg Roberts' motto!
