Oh he describes what he hears. If there is deficient/emphasized bass, if there is brightness/dullness, if he notices distortion, or imaging problems, how well the dispersion is, etc. He even cites what tracks he listened to. He just doesn't use the ambiguous, BS, non technical terms that are far too common in speaker review.
The issue is that there is a lexicon of words that has been developed and agreed upon by the audiophile community that describes quite well certain subjective auditory experiences . To denigrate that would be like going around telling people that what they see as RED is actually GREEN! See, that's also a subjective word.
For example, stuff like time coherency, planars, dipoles, multipoles, soundstage, dynamics, etc... those are expressed in hard to measure, or understand, measurements. I mean, is it better to describe that a speaker has really good time coherence with realistic, shimmering treble able to make the crash cymbal sound realistic or do you want to see a pair of waterfall plots that describe the spectral and time delay/decay?
For example, although it is easy to see the harmonic distortion spectrum of a device, it's easier to say that one device sounds harsh and another musical. How about inadequate power supply current? Easier to say that one device produces limits the dynamics while another soars and generates crescendos while remaining accurate during pianissimos.
I think using the 'agreed upon words' that reflect the act of listening are likely much easier to use than spending five minutes analyzing the plots. Nevermind that most non-audiophiles likely know neither. Hence, using non-audiophile words and no graphs/plots to measure frequency and time, is a very gross approximation and useless for the cognoscenti and the audiophile/engineer/scientists.
Example again, I have three terms for snow, but eskimos have like 40++. Does that mean that eskimos are wasting their time? Nope, they KNOW snow, they spend time on snow, they have words to describe all kinds of snow that to us would be like the same. Just as audiophiles spend time and care about audio while most people claim they can't hear the difference between a Bose Acoustimass MP3 player and a pair of Magnepans driven by a Nelson Pass XA200.8....
See? IMHO, the guy at ASR is guilty of over simplification. Again, he reminds me of Julian Hirsch. Good with the scope but in serious need of a new battery for his hearing aid. ;-)