mijostyn,
You mentioned a "bright" system imaging the cymbals "10 feet in front of the snare." Well, there are more egregious imaging manipulations, especially with drums, that are a deliberate artifact of the original mastering. The drums on Tool’s "Fear Inoculum," for instance. The drum set seems HUGE, spanning the entire width of the (reproduced) soundstage and even indulging in moving back and forth across the breath of the stereo image! It has been remarked on this forum before that, in a jazz ensemble, the drums "should" be in the center rear, as they would actually be on stage, and they should STAY there. But that exaggerated effect with Tool is undeniably exciting—and not at all uncommon in rock, where a simulacrum of a live club performance is not what the engineers were going for. Think of the drums (again, just for instance!) on any Rush album. During the instrumental section of "Tom Sawyer," the drums start on the left and move across the "stage." This is NOT "realistic," but it is kind of thrilling.
All I’m saying is that, although I also go for "realistic" audio reproduction, and consider the "real" sound of acoustic instruments a kind of benchmark (given the many remarks in this thread already about the questionable status of "the real"), heavily produced music is obviously not bound by this principle. And that doesn’t make such music somehow a failure.
None of which is meant to suggest that you’re not right to want to restrain the frequency response of your system so that a not-intended effect of foregrounding certain frequencies is defeated as much as possible.
