I completely agree with everything you say, spalding. I, too am the salesman's nightmare!

I am in NO way 'defending' the E80. I have never even touched one, and have NO opinion about the speaker's sound, other than to say 'opinions vary'. I am just trying to suggest ways to track down WHY....

I, too am experienced enough to get a good idea of the sound without all that detail. But some here are not, and there definitely seems to be a large gap between those that understand what the Mastering section can do, and those that don't (I DID apologize to you 'experts', remember?).

It's abuse, and I include what I consider to be VERY aggressive, default factory presets in that abuse, can very often make the difference between a great basic sound, and a squashed, hissy, flat, dynamically unresponsive sound. And often, just turning off the EQ and especially compression can at least restore the instrument to something that anyone other than marketing 'experts' (got to make it loud, got to make it POP! Got to hype it up to sell!) might actually enjoy.

Now, I'm not sure all that is going to affect the E80's speakers. But I can tell you for sure that the day I turned off all the mastering compression, my G70 started to sound much more dynamic and live. Now that I have per-part EQ (and per-drum within a kit), the master EQ is just for room correction only. Want more bass? EQ the bass! Want more highs on the cymbals? EQ the cymbals...!

Don't boost the bass on the piano and the highs on the strings (which is what a master EQ would do) to get what you want...