First, let me say that ive been down the road of the purest. I know what great systems sound like that dont employ tone equalization. My conclusions were this: While many CD's sounded very good in this environment, I found some did not. Some recordings I find horribly deficient in the bass region, the treble region, or both. Plainly said, the sound engineer didnt always do his/her job properly.

Add to this that nowadays, you have a lot of material out there that is self released. Many of these recordings employ less than state of the art technology and sound flat and lifeless to me.

I also sample a lot of mp3's. Need more be said for the need for tonal capability for these?