[Bierce85]

What I don't understand is this:

If the average joe doesnt feel it's necessary to buy a decent system and is happy listening on his laptop or cheap desktop PC speakers, why bother to change a mix based on how it sounds on those things?

It's not like as he's listening he's thinking "man, that snare is really poppin', not sure I like where the vocal is sitting, though". He's just listening to the song.

In my experience different consumer playback systems sound so colored and different from each other it would be impossible to really mix with all that in mind. Also in my experience, most of those systems seem to just homogenize everything anyway. I used to have computer speakers to reference with but quickly realized they were just pushing their own sound on what was playing through them, not showing problems.

I do have a pair of mini radioshack "realistic" speakers from the 80's you'd have to pry out of my dead hands. Those things tell you more about the bass then anything I've ever heard.