[dedward]

The waveform you are trying to reproduce, though, was mixed and mastered by a guy on studio monitors or similar, and in such a way that it would sound appropriate on the systems his audience is going to use.. or some version thereof. He's not pushing things to the limit of what his studio setup can produce, because that's going to sound like crap anywhere else.

What you listen on to master isn't necessarily what you'd listen on for fun.

If you were taking raw recordings of something with mics with really flat response curves, and wanted to play it back as accurately as possible, this would hold - but that's not the case. It's all about what sounds good to you.

[chroma]

Again, consider displays: Similar to music, movies are mastered on high-end gear. Staff use properly-calibrated displays. They often view scenes in dark rooms. Similar to music, movies are mastered so that they won't look terrible on the audience's displays. Some dark scenes are made a little more contrast-y. Some colors are tweaked. Maybe even the white balance is altered (though this is often more stylistic than corrective).

Now if you're buying a display, are you going to ignore measurements and just go with whatever looks good to you? Hopefully not. Even if you prefer bluer tones or higher contrast, you'll want to know numbers for white point, color accuracy, and contrast ratio. You won't just eyeball it in a store. You definitely wouldn't trust subjective reviews where someone says, "This display seems more contrast-y and blue." It shouldn't be any different with audio gear.

[gigq]

A counter argument I'd give is has anyone ever described a TV as being too harsh, as in they can't watch it for an hour without experiencing "fatigue" that causes them to need to stop. Of course with a TV this sounds ridiculous we just want the most life like picture possible so these measurements are a great way to accomplish that.

With headphones though while something may sound more accurate it might not be enjoyable to listen to. It can be too harsh to our ears and cause listening fatigue. While the Sennheiser HD800 are a great pair of headphones I find them very difficult to listen to on a neutral amp for long periods of time. The only way I could really enjoy them was to get a warmer tube amp. In the end I replaced them with the Audeze LCD-3 which I would argue are less accurate headphones but are far more enjoyable.

[Shog9]

Heh... Folks use software like f.lux to purposefully distort their displays in order to reduce fatigue.

The ability to adjust the output to one's liking should not be confused with an inability to faithfully reproduce input.

[gigq]

That's a pretty good comparison. In both cases you are adding warmth to a source one via software and the other via an amp.