I agree with what you said so I guess I'm in the minority, because I like the near field listening myself. I'm using line arrays and there designed so I'm always in the near field. I don't listen to my system everyday but when I do fire it up I listen at least 2+ hours or more and it dosen't bother me. When you switch media you can really tell a difference on what they did in the control rooms of a studio or differences in acoustics from different halls on live recordings.