tastes are what they are you're right, like some would kill to get something like that
and others will say a 5years old can do better.
but what is kept blurred in audio for really bad reasons, is what defines the norm.
almost everybody can relate to a norm and learn to recognize it. it wouldn't change who we are and what we like to get some norms once and for all.
we cry our differences in hearing but it serves no purpose. our eyes are just the same, but strangely you never see photographers arguing about the "good" white balance. we go from a given camera with given settings, with a given lens, to a given computer with a given screen we calibrate ourself, then to some printer or whatever. and at the end we manage to all get pretty close to what we all know as a correct colorimetry. it would be completely impossible if image had been treated as an unfathomable cult like audio has.
it would be oh so easy to decide upon one frequency response (why not vaguely electrically flat?) and all say that it's neutral. pros I'm sure have always been ok with this on the pro-to-pro dialogue. it's when it comes to pro-to-consumer dialogues that the lines get blurry. and when it's about consumers tolkien to themselves then trolls pops out(sorry too tempting).
from this point on, all gears could be measured by how they differ from this universal neutral. and I can't think of a single negative consequence of this unification.
oh yeah there is one, 5billions people would not anymore be able to claim they like neutral when 99.9% of them actually don't. so what? it would just be one less fashion and people could start looking for what they really like and what is really crap, instead of trying to look pro.
back to my photo analogy, we know everything of any camera coming on the market, same for the lenses, the quantity of accurate information is just staggering. and knowing that this canon lens is better than that nikon one doesn't stop people from getting nikon, knowing that the last nikon camera crushes canon in high iso didn't make me sell my canon.
people still make choices based on what they like and what they need, we just all know a lot more and don't need to buy the last 10 cameras to find the right one.
as a result of always knowing what is what, I know how to balance the colors of a picture the right way because I learned from the norm so I can get it right when asked. and when it's only for myself, I abuse the reds because I love it ^_^. norms never restricted creativity and tastes, they just tell you how far you've wandered.
that is in my eyes the full length of how different we are. audio should be something perfectly straight and normed from the pros to us. and then we would pic knowingly and adjust to our very own personal tastes and needs.
all this trial and error based on how we all are different is just a huge sodomy from the sellers to keep the market more active than it needs to be, and prevent the stagnant archaisms from getting bankrupted in favor of real quality.
quality that could and woul still have hundreds of unique sound signature, I wish for a norm, not a limitation.