Hi @brucealangreene,
Very interesting feedback as it is inline with what a significant amount of people think, it is a very subjective topic, some people like ACES tone rendering, some don’t care and some don’t like it.
Now to be super specific, ACES has multiple components and I think you are referring to the RRT because technically until you enter it your ACES data represents scene referred relative exposure values which are linear, i.e. without tone rendering.
This issue has been examined in our ACES - Retrospective and Enhancements paper.
For your information, the ACES Next BoF this Thursday at Siggraph 2017 will have this point specifically discussed among others.
Cheers,
Thomas