Within the context of headphones that don't sound great without EQ, the preset that sounds the best to start with and then tailor myself, yes, that's exactly what I've been saying. There's nothing different about ending up in the same place in half the time as I haven't needed to faff around with getting it to the same sort of baseline i would have otherwise been at going from scratch.
if none of the presets sounded good to my ears then sure from scratch would be the only option, as it stands, only 1 preset on the X9 sounded good to start with and I made that into my own with a few minor changes to the upper end, and ironically it was the JM1 target which is for IEMs.
Meanwhile on the K13 R2R a Harman target 2018 sounded good but needed a boost to the mids and upper range for sparkle.
Job done.
Again, it doesn't matter what the preset is based off, the idea and principle being I am tailoring the remaining half of the EQ to sound where I'd like it to be at the end. I just feel you are misunderstanding what I am saying and simply hearing one thing is all.
The only thing that matters is how it sounds at the end, nothing else matters.