Do you trust your ears more than measurements?

I measured a lot in my younger years.  I got the Behringer stuff and did digital eq to get my bass response near perfect.  I built tons of bass traps and spent all kinds of time messing around in my basement.  I'm glad I did it, I got a little bit of a feel for how a graph translates to what I perceive.  I rarely do anything like that now, though.  The last time I did I set my sub level by ear and measured it and I had set it just about perfect.  I decided that in-room bass response can be pretty uneven in the deep bass and it doesn't bother me.  You can EQ it down 3-4 db and it'll help but if you eq it down 15 to get it flat it sounds weird.  

A lot of good answers here. I’ve been working with measuring and listening for the last week, listening and noticing what I don’t like, and then trying to understand how to fix it. Measurements help get me in the ballpark. I know what a really bad sounding measurement looks like. What’s harder to tell is what a really good sound measurement looks like compared to a decent sounding measurement. There are a lot of different ways a system can sound good or bad. I'm using horns that can load down to 600Hz with some eq. If I move the crossover  from 600 Hz to 1000 Hz I can get more headroom and dynamics at the price of less natural tonal character because the dispersion isn’t as smooth at the crossover. I also get better imaging in some ways with the higher crossover because the midbass horn gets beamy between 600 and 1000 Hz. The measurements show lower distortion at high volume and better in room clarity at the higher crossover. My ears tell me the tonal quality matters more. I wish I could have it both ways, but the benefit of the higher crossover really shows when I crank it up louder than I usually want to listen.

Great post with which i concur... Thanks...

A lot of good answers here. I've been working with measuring and listening for the last week, listening and noticing what I don't like, and then trying to understand how to fix it. Measurements help get me in the ballpark. I know what a really bad sounding measurement looks like. What's harder to tell is what a really good sound measurement looks like compared to a decent sounding measurement. There are a lot of different ways a system can sound good or bad. If I move my crossover for my tweeters from 600 Hz to 1000 Hz I can get more headroom and dynamics at the price of less natural tonal character because the dispersion isn't as smooth. I also get better imaging in some ways with the higher crossover because it gets beamy between 600 and 1000 Hz. The measurements show lower distortion at high volume and better in room clarity at the higher crossover. My ears tell me the tonal quality matters more.

We may not all agree but there are many ways to approach your system.  Wealth of info here. 

I trust the measurements. At this point, audio is not a mystery to science. It knows how to measure the whole frequency spectrum. It knows what the vast majority of people prefer. And it knows about people's proclivity towards cognitive dissonance. Companies like Harmon Karden have been measuring this for decades and sharing the results.

I want to start out neutral and if my preferences differ from that I can always tweak with a slight tone adjustment. But if the measurements start out all over the place, all the tone adjustment in the world may not be able to fix it. Some people will be outliers. Not so much in audible capabilities but in preferences. And that's fine too.