All right then, if you've spoken to him at length why not tell us about how he decides whether a speaker is functioning to his liking (or the liking of other people)?

Does he for instance use test instruments and an anechoic chamber? Perhaps he just measures his speakers, and knows that they sound good, and therefore neither he, nor anyone else, needs to listen to them... That would be completely compatible with what Floyd Toole (head of R&D at Harman) has been publishing in the AES.

Billy Woodman, stopped fiddling with subjective testing using music sometime ago -even admitted in it the press (Widescreen Review) - now ATC speaker design is done with measurements.