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Sorry I was unclear. A single speaker situated in front of you.
Ok I see. Let's assume for argument's sake that they don't do this comparison. They are nevertheless equalising the components of the mix (and the mix as a whole) so that the sound coming from the L and R speakers sounds the way they want it to sound to a pair of ears positioned equidistantly between the speakers.
I have two points to make.
Firstly, let's say they get it "wrong", i.e. they overcompensate, undercompensate, or incorrectly compensate. Where does that leave someone at home applying a global filter to the master based on an assumption that the engineers mixed the music using only a mono centre channel (which if I'm not mistaken, was your suggestion)?
Secondly, the instruments or voices being recorded are not capturing the general, abstract essence of the voices/instruments that they are recording, such that there is a single "correct" tonal balance that the mixing engineer can apply to accurately recreate that voice/instrument.
Instead, the engineer is working with a recording taken by a microphone that captures only how a voice/instrument sounded at a particular point in space in the room in which it was recorded, as well as the multiple reflections that occurred in that space and which arrived at the mic from a multitude of directions, but which the reproduction system now emits from only X directions (where X = the number of speakers in the reproduction system, i.e. in the case of stereo, two).
Considering all this, it quickly becomes clear that there is no universal "correct" tonal balance for any particular recorded sound. The engineer's job is to judge for themselves what the optimal tonal balance is for a recorded sound using the system with which they are engineering the mix.
In this light, the optimal system for engineering the mix is the same (type of) system upon which the mix will ultimately be reproduced by the end-listener. The tonal balance that the engineer judges to be "correct" (or at least, desired) will best be reproduced by a system conforming to the same general properties as that with which the engineer made the judgement. If both the mixing setup and the listening setup are the same (or of the same type, or as similar as possible), the listener can rest assured that they are hearing the most "correct" tonal balance, as judged by the engineer.