Since many albums nowadays are produced and mastered with too much energy in the harshness region, a piece of gear with a dip in the harshness region, and often followed by a peak around 10-12 kHz to retain some "sheen" or "air", will make these albums sound more pleasant, as my own experiments with an equalizer has shown. My speakers are fairly linear, and things like Diana Krall, Laurence Juber, etc. sound amazing and don't need any adjustments, but many modern albums do sound better when I equalize them.
As for the flowery prose, I'm wondering if this was a trend that was started by people who believed they heard differences, whether there were any or not, since the measurements often showed none. And to many readers flowery prose was easier to understand than the technical jargon. So the "romantic" reviewers felt justified in their writings, many readers understood it better (none of my friends who are into hi-fi really understand much of the technical aspect, and it's also difficult for me), and the manufacturers probably sold more equipment. Then in the end a larger percentage of the people into hi-fi were happy, although it came at the expense of the happiness of the people who understood the technical aspect, but at least nowadays, that's a minority of the people into audio.
As for whether inaccuracy sounds good or not, I think this Lounge phono preamp, as well as the Ayre Codex, and eXamplar Exception phono preamp, are good examples of people on this site who have bought these particular units and thought they sounded great, even though they were poorly made. Amir certainly didn't like the sound of the Ayre Codex, but the owner liked (at least until he saw the measurements), so ...
