I am in total agreement with you @Louis_Richardson.
I think one of the reasons the audiophile community dismisses EQ is historic… EQing music used to be done by passive analogue components and resulted in phase issues and a deterioration of the sound due to more circuitry being involved and a longer path-length for the signal.
That’s all gone now we store and eq music digitally, as long as the mathematics is performed at a high enough bit-depth, which it is in Roon.
To my mind, much of the selection and matching of various hi-fi components and the preference of some combinations over other combinations over the years has been due to certain EQ differences between the final combination of components.
As an example… People talk about ‘preferring a certain D-A over another D-A’ because it’s ‘Warmer…Smoother…’ etc.
That’s all achievable in EQ within DSP in my opinion.
Everybody’s preferences are different when it comes to sound, and even the shape and design of peoples heads and ears affect the strength of different frequencies presented to their eardrums (Have a look at Nuraphone headphones, they reckon there’s something in that!)
I personally am more sensitive to mid-range frequencies around 1-2KHz. I really don’t like a ‘forward’ sounding speaker. I have Kef LS50W and they’re great… really open and crystal clear, but… in my room, I think the midrange can get a fraction ‘shouty’. So… I run PEQ and reduce 1K-3K by 4dB. I also boost 80Hz downwards by 3dB as I’ve always liked a ‘warmer’ sound.
A couple of years ago I heard a friend’s many-thousand-pound Naim system, and while it sounded sublime on well-recorded pieces, it ‘shouted’ at me on less well-recorded pieces. He had no way of adjusting the EQ, so, consequently, he said there were lots of recordings he ‘couldn’t listen to anymore’. I thought at the time, that’s a real shame and started researching a system that would give me some control if I needed it, without destroying the clarity and transparency of the better recordings.
I found Roon, upgraded my passive LS50, driven from an AV amp, to LS50W and… haven’t looked back!!
Now… if we can just get Roon to develop a way of specifying a certain EQ preset, to be used in addition to my normal EQ, for a few of my more poorly mixed albums, which can then be auto-recalled when they play, that would be perfection!!