I get what you are saying, [MENTION=112380]jimmys69[/MENTION].
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of experience doing this and a trained ear to work with... I'm pretty much a noob to this.
What I do have is an electrical engineering degree (only barely relevant--just means I have a concept of frequencies and some of the math around them), and a high tolerance for research, looking at graphs, taking measurements, and experimenting. I hate spending money without justification, so I wanted to be able to document "before and after" of all the time and money I was investing in treatment. My treatment approach has been pretty much "by-the-book" (but not so much "buy-the-catalog"), so the measurements are just to help me convince myself that the book was right, and it was worth the investment.
I had some bad experiences back in college with mixing decisions made in a tiny un-treated dorm room. After that I decided that if I was ever going to attempt again to actually record music I would put the effort into fixing a room as best as I could.
I know it will never be perfect, and I think I have about hit the point of diminishing returns, but my tests today with the Acoustimac panels in temporary position have me down to about ±8db across the spectrum. That's pretty good, right? I'll post those details once they are permanently mounted.
If you have any tips on training my ear, I will gladly take them. I have enjoyed playing with the amroc room mode calculator--selecting frequencies it has identified as problematic, and then walking around the room listening for them. I also discovered by ear that a ground loop isolator I was using on a laptop was killing my highs (makes sense from an electrical engineering perspective). Other than that, all I have is an intention to pay good attention to various sound systems in various environments.
I am eager to get past this point and start working on actual mixes so that I can develop that trained ear! Then I'll be posting mixing questions in the other parts of this forum!