Do my ears deceive me??

soix could be right.  maybe my hearing is bad.  I'm 51 now, and have listened to lots of loud rock and roll since my teens.    You can make the argument an eq is an extra path in the chain.   But you can also use an equalizer or bass/treble to adjust for the room.    I WOULD NEVER BUY SOMETHING WITHOUT IT.   You are limited to 1 sound and that's it.    Different sources (vinyl, cd, streamer) can all have a different sound profile, and one may want to adjust for that.    Maybe the high end makers don't put it in cuz it saves them money too.    I don't want this to turn into a pissing match.   But if you bought something with an eqalizer.  Would you just leave it in 1 setting for life, cuz it's the most accurate??

Not only did I have the Marantz's tone controls to fiddle with, I also had the pots on my JBLs to do the same with. The problem is, they were both too broad in scope and while it did cure the edge and bite, it was also like wrapping my tweeters and midranges with bolts of cheesecloth. Both ways just sucked the life out of the music. 

Unless you have the money and skill for a highly exacting device, most types of EQ are a blunt instrument, not a scalpel, as you're effecting bordering frequencies that you shouldn't be messing with, unless you like that kind of sound. 

I'm 69 years old with occasional but soft tinnitus, and I can hear minute changes and shifts with everything I tinker with down to some that seem like sideways moves, but I still hear them. The solution is to live with knowing that it's not perfect, but can be mighty damn fine sounding.

All the best,
Nonoise

@soix 

+1

Well I can say this.  In EVERY system I have ever listened to, be it home or car, i can make it sound much better to my ears than it being in the flat position.   I'm not gonna buy 20,000 to 30,000 speakers so I can not need an equalizer.  It's not economical, and I have better things to spend my money.  Audio is important but not everything.   I admit I have not demoed many speakers the last 10 to 15 years, cuz a lot of audio stores have closed up, and I've been content.  Many of these brands have NO way to demo, and I'm not going to travel all over to do that.   Plus I am limited in the speaker placement in my room.  It's not real big, and I kind of need to stick with tall and skinny speakers.   

     Not to flame on, but if you guys have higher end televisions.  Do you get it calibrated, and never use the other settings on it?  With no ability to adjust the contrast, brightness, color, and all the other variables when you watch different programs?   Would you buy a guitar amplifer with no TONE controls???  I'm perplexed as to why one would want this limitation in any endeavor.   

     If I took a hypothetical Jeff Rowland amp (1 with tone control and 1 without) what percentage of sound degradation does the 1 with tone control have???  Could he really not build them to damn near the same specs.  And you could pretty much make them sound identical??

If room acoustics are bad, every speaker will sound similar because of the heavy room signature. Once you start killing reflections and bass overhang, the real nature of speakers comes out.