Fidelity only takes one form. All the rest is editing. Some like edits some don't. Problem is no speaker is close to the ideal. Add to that the room interaction and then all hell breaks loose and the subjectivists have a field day opining willy-nilly. Subjectivists are happy with some of the most coloured speakers and pronounce them "moooooosical". Check out the measured response for the Verity speakers in this month's Stereophile. Unless the aberrations are great, most peoples ears get used to pretty dismal sound pretty quickly: that's called "break-in".
What does listening to a speaker really tell us?
Ok. I got lots of advice here from people telling me the only way to know if a speaker is right for me is to listen to it. I want a speaker that represents true fidelity. Now, I read lots of people talking about a speakers transparency. I'm assuming that they mean that the speaker does not "interpret" the original source signal in any way. But, how do they know? How does anyone know unless they were actually in the recording studio or performance hall? Isn't true that we can only comment on the RELATIVE color a speaker adds in reference to another speaker? This assumes of course that the upstream components are "perfect."