Hello, I hope everyone is well.
In the professional realm,meters, from the most basic SPL through spectrum anylizers and TEF boxes and beyond, are used as a starting point when dialing-in rooms and gear. It gives you an unbiased reference. Then,the Engineer tweeks things to his/her own liking. Meters give you good, useful information and anytime I change any parameter in any listening space I always 'take the system back to zero' re-meter, and tweek the system again.
IMHO this technique gives a good reference that you can then adjust to your own liking. It keeps you from trying to adjust a horribly out-of-calibration system. When you start off very far from metered calibration, it makes getting good results just that much more difficult.

Az- Sidenote. I completely agree with using a phantom center for listening to music. When using a phantom center for surround applications, aren't you losing the artifacts that were specifically mixed for the center channel? If not, wouldn't one of the digits in the 5,6,7.1 formats be extraneous? Just a thought.
Until next time,
Mix