Should Equalizers make a comeback?

Every room is acoustically different. Speakers have different radiation patterns etc. Who actually thinks that he is hearing the same thing in his room that the recording engineer heard in his? Many "straight wire with gain" folks roll tubes, change wires, even components, in order to get their desired results of "no equalization". Room equalization is a necessity to accomplish the "purest" goal, much less personal taste.

I sympathize with Rgs92. Realizing equalization that does more good than harm is difficult using the products currently available. The market simply has no interest in the subject. It would be fairly easy to design a module which would measure the in-room response at the listening position and then correct it. The problem is simply that the market for such features is too small to spread the R+D costs sufficiently. Some HT receivers do a fair job (HK) of gain matching using a mike in the remote control. A little more development could include low frequency equalization as well. Mid and upper bands are very tricky as masking effects, etc. come into play.

Oddly, even white noise can improve intelligibility. One reason so little progress is made is that people have a tendency to accept logic rather than to experiment.

"EQ involves additional stages, capacitors in signal path etc. (some form of signal processing) Let just say that it doesn't add to clarity."

If one is in the digital domain this simply is not true. The digital amplifier simply runs a program and provides gain. Whether the output reflects the input accurately or is modified has no bearing on the quality of the output. A modification can improve or diminish clarity depending on a myriad of factors. I have been experimenting with equalization for years. Trial and error trump theory for most of us at this point, but some bright guy or gal will develop the correct algorithm.