@russ69 it is not one or the other what brings the best of audio gear and rooms. I believe you need both.
For ourselves, my partner and I, we listen and then we do measure IF we like it. We want to make sure that both my ears and logic participate. I have yet to listen a system I liked, that did not measure with he same degree of goodness.
Why people are afraid of measurements, or make it a binary option? I am not saying to not trust your ears over measurements, but undoubtedly measurements will take you in paths, some good and some bad, that your ears alone could not.
Yes there are some things that are very difficult to measure but most everything can be measured. I even measured my old NHB-458 and the NHB-468 before I upgraded. The NHB-468 sounds better in most areas than the NHB-458 for sure, but it also measures better.
The same is true with speaker placement. Sure you can place your speakers by ear, but you are leaving at the very least 30%-40% on the table from a proper sonically measured room. 20 years back I moved to a hew house with 3 rooms that were used for music, all sonically treated with bass traps, etc., but the rooms were just ugly. The sound was incredible, my gear never sounded so good, but we were fortunate to meet a couple that designs opera houses and symphony halls. To make the story short, I hired their company to come and look at the rooms and see if they could be improved and wanted the rooms to be more than music rooms.
They measure the rooms as they were, and then removed every single panel, every single diffuser and bass trap, took every piece of furniture and started to measure the empty room with lots of microphones, and selected quite a few optimal speaker placements and marked the positions with an UV paint each one with a different sound signature. Then incrementally added furniture at the end we had 3 rooms that sounded magnitudes better than before, without the vast majority of panels, diffusers or bass traps. Just 2 diffusers in one room, 1 diffuser in another, 1 bass trap and 2 diffusers the another. The 3 rooms are much more inviting and comfortable, that sound better not just for us but for most of our friends including 2 of our friends, that play piano and cello in concert halls around the world.
Now, we can use them for listening and to entertain too. Sure they could have used a few more panels/diffusers to make the rooms better sounding, but my partner and I appreciated the styles in the room more than the incrementally better sound experience.
Recently I bought a house for work in the USA, the house is made of wood sticks, the floor is suspended on wood sticks, basically a big resonator. I got REW and and 2 microphones, after 3 days of listening and measuring what I was listening, I ended with a room that sounds way better than what I started and 2 basic speaker placements, one for Classic/Spanish guitar/Flamenco and one for Rock.
Every ear is different, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I do not understand why one would spend $x on audio gear and not, at the very least, spend 2-3 days with REW, listen and measure as to extract everything out of your room and system.
Sorry for my grammar, I started to learn English late in my life.
