Early loudspeaker preference studies were too crude to validate any measurement model

Evidence

The oldest investigations suffer from a lack of truly good loudspeakers, and a lack of comprehensive anechoic measurements on them. Differences were audible and measurable, but the differences were so large and the misbehavior so severe that almost any measurement would have shown a correlation with perceptions. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1192

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this ‘almost any measurement correlates’ problem still bias modern validation when equipment is uniformly poor?