Michael, virtually every modern speaker does well without tone controls. That's why they've virtually disappeared from high end gear. Sure, there's a few speakers out there that have adjustment jumpers or interchangable resistors for tone control, but that's a very rare thing. Flat response really is a fairly well defined idea these days. Nobody is selling bright, shouty speakers like JBL was trying to hock in the 70's and 80's. Nobody is selling speakers like those dark Rogers 3/5 clones of the 80's.
You talk about some mysterious "code" in recordings. I guess every producer has their own idiosyncratic preferences, but I don't buy that there's some code I need to manipulate my system to interpret. I suppose if you really wanted to hear the music as the producer intended you'd need a system that could emulate the speakers, amplifiers, and mixing rooms of every studio in the world. Of course that's assuming there's some huge variety between, which there mostly isn't. Most use thoroughly modern equipment that conforms to that widely held belief of what flat response is. As long as my stereo performs roughly inside that envelope of acceptable flatness, there's no need to fiddle with controls, which I do have but never touch. Besides, I hear variations between any two tracks on the same album. Should I get up and tweaked some 32 band EQ to make sure every track sounds the same before the next song plays?
