OK. I find this challenging and I accept the challenge. BEFORE I start, this is my genuine effort at giving some material for people to think about and perhaps we’ll better understand each other as a result of this.
I have NO intention of provoking, insulting, demeaning or otherwise hurting anyone. But I WILL be quite frank and straight forward.
Here goes: it’s true! I DO think flat frequency response is superior. AND, I think it’s superior for everyone involved, even the boutique audiophiles.
First the neutral gear:
Briefly, FFR is not dull, flat, flabby, unexciting… This is a term that means that “what you feed a piece of equipment, will be what comes out”. It will NOT flatten out or make dull some audio material that isn’t otherwise dull in the first place, due to production. If it’s dull, you hear it dull, if it’s exciting, you hear it as such (whatever that meant to anyone).
NO ONE is saying you should leave all of your gear completely neutral since most here understand it’s not possible. Me and my brother have exactly the same equipment in different houses, so who has the neutral one, right? They sound completely different.
Even if the gear is neutral, it can only perform as such in an an-echoic room and that was probably the last time it did. You always have to fine tune it (or at least should). You buy gear, you see how it interacts with your space and fine tune it.
IMPORTANT: whatever you want from your gear, you’ll get it more easily if it’s as neutral as possible. Dialing back some distinctive voicing you, accidentally, don’t like is not as easy as you may think. It’s not just – lower the bass and raise the treble, for example. So, ALL your preferences are easier to achieve with neutral equipment and that’s why I say it’s superior even for those of you who like certain sound signatures.
Now, sound signatures.
Buying sound signature equipment is not as subjective as you may think. It’s just another brand and all of them are mass produced. It’s not your individual taste, it’s more like; do you prefer Mercedes or Porsche. It is NOT taylor-made for your listening room and your ears in particular.
Expecting some company to tap blind in the dark until it accidentally stumbles upon the sound signature that will perform in your house the way you imagined, even though their testing room has nothing in common with your house… I don’t know, you should rather play lottery. It’s not impossible, but life’s too short.
One other thing, trial and error would imply that you can only decide after hearing them all. Who knows, maybe in the shop next to the one you've visited is the love of your life, but you just got tired that day and missed on it.
Many of the usual arguments of the “sounds good to me” crowd, fall short even for their own choices. Thinking a company will guess what you like and what “sounds good to you” (even though most of you think we all hear a bit differently, which would include you and the manufacturer) by accident is less than convincing.
If gear preforms well, doesn’t add or subtract, it is RELIABLE for all your sound signature explorations. It is, so to speak, more tunable or at least much more easily tunable and thus, IMO, superior.
This is why I DON’T think our choices are equal and are just a matter of opinion in this one regard; in the DSP era, we can both use FFR gear much more effectively and much more easily than sound sig. gear. Chances you will hit it on the head with blind guessing are negligible.