I sympathize with the OP's viewpoint, still my 2 c:
1. Effects, reverb delays, compression, they all belong to music production, not to HiFi listening. Whoever produced the recording you are listening to has applied those already; no point in adding them.
2. EQ is another story; it's not the devil. Better do without but sometimes your room has a less than flat response that needs to be corrected. You can go at that with the optimal and expensive way of modifying your room or with then less than optimal but way more convenient and less expensive addition of a proper EQ. My room booms at 70 Hz, it's a square box, bad for listening but I can't reasonably change it or add traps. So I do EQ; not perfect but betters the listening experience.
All the best,
Mark.
1. Effects, reverb delays, compression, they all belong to music production, not to HiFi listening. Whoever produced the recording you are listening to has applied those already; no point in adding them.
2. EQ is another story; it's not the devil. Better do without but sometimes your room has a less than flat response that needs to be corrected. You can go at that with the optimal and expensive way of modifying your room or with then less than optimal but way more convenient and less expensive addition of a proper EQ. My room booms at 70 Hz, it's a square box, bad for listening but I can't reasonably change it or add traps. So I do EQ; not perfect but betters the listening experience.
All the best,
Mark.