Mahgister, the first thing a piano tuner pulls out is a tuning fork. The tuning fork is his reference and yes, from there the rest is by ear.
The room is tuned unlike the piano with the feedback of a large bandwith MARKED OUT by asymmetrical Helmholtz resonators near the tweeter and bass driver and coming from tweeters of one speaker and bass driver of the other speaker to marked out each wavefront for each ear respectively.... This relatively large bandwith is not a frequency tone like with a fork but a PITCH PLAYING TIMBRE when music play for my ears.....
Perhaps the problem we have is that we have no reference to compare our systems to and never will. What does a band sound like in your living room?I do know how a guitar a piano or a voice must sound like.... If you get this right the rest comes like beads on a string....Aynway we cannot have perfection but an optimal reasult is very possible... I did it...
An image in our brains, a quasi electrical event which varies from one of us to the next and changes based on the emotional state of that individual. I have noticed in myself that the same system can sound different based on god knows what, my emotional state maybe?I lived through the same experience than you but in the period of time BEFORE my system was optimally set.... I go from a mood swing where things were upgraded and i was pleased, but nothing being optimal, i depressed again, and the cycles goes on... TILL an optimal S.Q. was reached with the audio system limitations i own....
Now i am not depressed at all dor many months because i have reach the optimal limit of my system using acoustic....
i had controlled for the better ALL acoustic features till they are in place like a puzzles pieces fitting together... It is fun and ask only for listening experiments....
After working for hours everything just sounded worse. I had to put it away, give myself a break. After three weeks and another $500 I think I can get back to enjoying music again. But, true audiophiles are never happy with their systems because in their imagination they can always sound better.It is not imagination that play games on you, it is acoustic problem: How to create a natural timbre experience, a very precise imaging, a large soundstage, a listener envelopment experience coupled with good sound width ?
I will never try that playing with a set of frequencies on a computer to adjust all these factors one frequency at a times and in a linear way... It is impossible task for most ears if not all...
Like i said electronic equalization is useful to fine tune the speakers in relation to the room, but i will try it now AFTER my room is already optimally passively treated and activelly controlled.... Now if i use the electronic equalizer i dont doubt that my relation speakers/room will be upgraded a bit...And i will only have to correct my resonators after that to adjust to the new situation....
But the huge improvement cannot come from an electronic equalizer it is only the cherry on the cake, it is not and could not be the acoustical cake.... Simple: two ears feedback dont work like a SINGLE microphone feedback....
I apologize for my rude answers sometimes...
No personal grunt against you....
My best to you....