Tangentially ...

I've been discussing with a friend recently, whether the old adage of listening to your productions on as many different systems, in all kinds of different locations, as possible is quite the truism it once was.

These days, the kit available to anyone with real aspiration to 'making it' is such that I can't really see any need even for FX plugins that simulate different environments (in a car, outside a club, on a radio, etc.), let alone actually going out and about to listen on the real thing.

Back in the day, when the kit wasn't that advanced even when it wasn't ropey, sure ... listening to it on different speakers, attached to different amplifiers, in different environments would help you assess how well it might come across and help you go back to the studio to re-engineer it to get you that coveted impact when played on the radio.

But, today, the quality of your Yamaha, KRK (or whatever) monitors is such that, in reality, there's no point listening to it on anything else, because how it sounds on your own system is (problems with room acoustics aside) as good as it's going to get before you hand it over to an engineer for mastering anyway — once it's as good as it's going to get in the (home) studio, other than purchase better soundcards, monitors, mics, FX, etc., there's nothing you can do to it that will make it sound any better anywhere else ... and no amount of tweaking it to compensate for the shortcomings of inferior reproduction on other kit is going to change that, simply make it sound duller (or, contrarily, overly bright) on any halfway decent system it might be played back on.

Modern tech has really changed and ... to a certain extent at least ... seriously democratised things.