Accuracy (especially timbre) is important to me for the obvious reasons stated above. To a large degree, overall frequency response is easily corrected upstream if needed - but the subtleties of timbre are not. If a speaker can't even reproduce a moderately flat frequency response, than it's patently impossible that it could be timbrally accurate. So it's not a speaker I would want personally.
However, it depends what you mean by your question - none of this is important to the typical buyer of expensive stereo equipment. As Hardesty points out, what sells best in the showrooms is "Boom and Sizzle". So if you manufacture and sell high end speakers are you going to strive for accuracy - unless that is your particular market segment (like Vandersteen or GMA)? Not if you want to stay in business. Remember the "Loudness" button" on your old receiver? Well, some guys would leave that sucker pushed in all the time - and others, even as teens, understood what it was for and when to unengage it.
(Any photographers out there remember what Velvia did to Ektachrome? Same thing - wildly inaccurate, oversaturated colors - but it looked great and became the standard if you were doing stock or advertising work.)
And that's OK - each to his own. Reproduction accuracy is not an ethical standard like "truth", it's a preference. And it's not a very popular one. Even "truth" itself isn't exactly a popular standard anymore. Not to get into politics, but look around! So why on earth would audio accuracy be important?
Wilson, to use a hackneyed example, are inaccurate speakers - but they don't advertise them as "accurate". They advertise them as sounding great and looking great. And to most people they do. They have a built in "Loudness button" and look like Lamborghini airscoops with woofers. The average doctor, lawyer, or hedge fund guy that picks up a copy of stereophile and orders a pair of Maxx's wouldn't in a million years consider having a pair of Vandersteens sitting in their living room. (BTW, I'm a hedge fund guy and my wife's a doctor, so I feel comfortable dissing them here :)
Certain speaker manufacturers have simply identified a target market that spends big bucks and they cater to it. It's called "high end".
Perhaps the problem is the casual interchangeability and confusion by marketers, reviewers, and consumers of the two terms "audiophile" and "high end". They are not (to us audiophiles) the same thing. If anyone wants to go on a crusade it should be to get everyone to define and use the two terms differently.
Audiophile equipment - designed for the pursuit, obviously not 100% attainable, of totally faithful reproduction of the information contained in the original source media. Wilson does not really qualify.
High End - designed to be great sounding and impressive looking with superb cabinetry/finish, utilizing high quality electromechanical components. Vandersteen does not really qualify.
However, it depends what you mean by your question - none of this is important to the typical buyer of expensive stereo equipment. As Hardesty points out, what sells best in the showrooms is "Boom and Sizzle". So if you manufacture and sell high end speakers are you going to strive for accuracy - unless that is your particular market segment (like Vandersteen or GMA)? Not if you want to stay in business. Remember the "Loudness" button" on your old receiver? Well, some guys would leave that sucker pushed in all the time - and others, even as teens, understood what it was for and when to unengage it.
(Any photographers out there remember what Velvia did to Ektachrome? Same thing - wildly inaccurate, oversaturated colors - but it looked great and became the standard if you were doing stock or advertising work.)
And that's OK - each to his own. Reproduction accuracy is not an ethical standard like "truth", it's a preference. And it's not a very popular one. Even "truth" itself isn't exactly a popular standard anymore. Not to get into politics, but look around! So why on earth would audio accuracy be important?
Wilson, to use a hackneyed example, are inaccurate speakers - but they don't advertise them as "accurate". They advertise them as sounding great and looking great. And to most people they do. They have a built in "Loudness button" and look like Lamborghini airscoops with woofers. The average doctor, lawyer, or hedge fund guy that picks up a copy of stereophile and orders a pair of Maxx's wouldn't in a million years consider having a pair of Vandersteens sitting in their living room. (BTW, I'm a hedge fund guy and my wife's a doctor, so I feel comfortable dissing them here :)
Certain speaker manufacturers have simply identified a target market that spends big bucks and they cater to it. It's called "high end".
Perhaps the problem is the casual interchangeability and confusion by marketers, reviewers, and consumers of the two terms "audiophile" and "high end". They are not (to us audiophiles) the same thing. If anyone wants to go on a crusade it should be to get everyone to define and use the two terms differently.
Audiophile equipment - designed for the pursuit, obviously not 100% attainable, of totally faithful reproduction of the information contained in the original source media. Wilson does not really qualify.
High End - designed to be great sounding and impressive looking with superb cabinetry/finish, utilizing high quality electromechanical components. Vandersteen does not really qualify.