I have enough different types of pairs of speakers that measure well. They're all pretty much at the mercy of recording (music only, in my case) quality and almost all exceed the average capabilities of what recordings are available. Some speakers are a bit too revealing and I had to learn about if what they were exposing would have been intentional in the original works. Excellent recordings sound flawless to my ears on my newer speakers.
The first clue came to me via JBL L100s, and how good so many rock recordings sounded on those, especially closer to the time that many of those recordings were released. I just thought they were superior speakers. There was no internet and all I had to go on was magazines and being from a small town, it took awhile (years) to connect the dots. I had never really considered that many studios were indeed using JBL. This is also what led many of us to near field listening, with trying to emulate a studio arrangement we had seen from photos in magazines and I think this really worked well. For years after, I tried to get speakers that were close to that style of speaker and it worked for 20 years until I took a break. When I reemerged into serious listening, things had changed, even after only a 5-6 year break from loud, high performance listening.
Most of what had changed was the notion that a whole room should sound good like a large cinema and for movies. We never needed the whole room to sound good for 2-channel music and even when there were parties, the essence of the lower distortion speakers in other parts of the room were still worlds better than what most people were used to hearing elsewhere in their lives. All we needed (or had room for, really) was a nearfield huddle that fit 5-6 people at most, but 2-3 people on average. We would move the speakers into position each time, and put them back out of the way when we were done. Sessions typically lasted for 2-3 hrs, to 2-3 days around weekends. Even now, in the best treated and measured rooms, if there is a get together, most of us old gear heads end up mingling up by the speakers.
What's different now that I have excellent measuring speakers? I end up EQ'ng recordings like I used to, on the fly and being more aware of what I am hearing with regard to unfavorable distortion or noise. What was screwing with me was having to do it via software that was not included with 'new to me' systems and technology, where simple tone controls could at least get us by in the past. Now, I start every album flat, and see what it needs after and make note of it and even store PEQ/DEQ settings by album name. It took awhile. Many get by without any EQ at all, and not just on one set of speakers.
I have measurement equipment and I toyed with it for awhile but I have a friend that is much better/fanatical at it (he follows AH as well) and he actually expected my near field op to be an acoustic train wreck. When he measured my MLP, he was shocked at how close I had gotten to as good as it can get. He ended up changing my settings back to what I had them at. According to him, I had my subs .5db hotter than what measures best as the only thing he could really find at all. But I often tune those by album, or at least genre from one session to the next so that is not consistent, either. Either way, he came out of it with "This is definitely worth doing."
