I don't think Mr. Vandersteen even remotely implied his speakers are the only ones "correctly" done. He knew late Jim Thiel and John Dunlavy also designed speakers with the same philosophy. When I started this hobby, I auditioned Vandersteen 2Ce and Thiel CS 2 2 among several other brands. Frankly, I didn't have to pull my hair off to settle on Thiel 2 2 and I could have easily chosen 2Ce as well. Tie breaker was Thiels has a cabinet and I didn't feel comfortable handling a speaker without a cabinet. I like to take this moment to Thank my local dealers in Denver area including Soundings, Listen Up, etc.
I was also fortunate to visit Dunlavy Audio Labs in Colorado Springs and those speakers were really well done and way out of my price range 🤣. Again, the late John Dunlavy followed a similar philosophy as Richard Vandersteen and he was also into measurements. He emphasized that a speaker should meet all the measurements first and rest follows afterwards.
Time/phase corrected speakers are not easy to design and needs careful balance of science and art and in this case music.
When you listen to such speakers, theory is that when the wave gets to you in its correct form your brain doesn't have to do a bunch of work to fix the distorted signal, and you can just relax and enjoy. @jon_5912
I couldn't have said it any better.