Experienced audiophiles best speaker

A few observations:
-People like the speakers they currently own.
-In general, you usually get what you pay for.
-There's a difference between favorite and best
-Comparing different designs without qualification is silly.

Would be nice to hear from someone with the perspective of years, who's had objective long-term experience with the true best (price no object).

Hi Rleff
I'm guessing that there aren't too many people really qualified to answer this question, other than maybe a few reviewers and dealers. But it might be hard to get an unbiased opinion from such a person, if they're still in the audio business.
I looked at the thread again, but I didn't see any answers that sound 'authoritative'. I'd like to hear from someone who's spent real time with some of the best of each design (planar, electrostatic, horn, high efficiency, multidriver, others) and then formed his/her opinion.

I'll admit that first impressions are important- you know immediately when a speaker sounds good if its in a good setup. But you have to live with a speaker to really understand its virtues with different types of music. A 'lively' speaker can eventually become fatiguing, and a more neutral design might be preferable over the long haul. I also think that speaker (and amplifier) evaluation is highly dependent on music type- for example, some speaker designs that excel with symphonic music simply fail with heavy metal, and vice versa.

We're not talking about absolute truth here, since the definition of great audiophile sound varies. That's why these opinions always need to be qualified. And its always nice to know the opinion of those who are really well-informed.

I mostly listen to small group acoustic jazz (vinyl source) and heavy metal (digital source). I have two setups. For jazz its all tubes, 300B SET to full range high efficiency coaxial paper drivers. Great for jazz, but no way for rock/metal.

For metal its tube-hybrid monoblocks to full-range three-way floorstanders with ceramic and diamond drivers. Fantastic for metal, but somewhat uninvolving for jazz.

These speakers have such different flaws and virtues. How to compare?