[modeless]

What makes a frequency response "good" anyway? Sound engineers wanting to produce the best experience for the most people should tune their music for the average frequency response, meaning that a "flat" or otherwise non-average frequency response would distort music in an unintended way.

[beat]

That's already happening, deliberately, in the music production stage. Arguably the most popular speaker in the world for professional music mixing is the Yamaha NS-10 (you may have seen pictures of them in recording studios, with their distinctive white woofer cones). They are terrible in terms of frequency response! They are aggressive to the point of nasty right in the 2khz range, where a: our ears are most sensitive (ears do not have a linear frequency response!), and b: human vocals are most present.

For vocals and vocal-like instruments such as saxophones and lead electric guitar, the NS-10 is downright evil. And that's why it's popular. If you can make a mix sound good on the NS-10, it'll sound good on almost anything else.

[nandemo]

What makes a frequency response "good" is subjective. A lot of audiophiles prefer flat, but many like e.g. tube amps, which aren't exactly flat, or headphones with V-shaped frequency response etc.

> meaning that a "flat" or otherwise non-average frequency response would distort music in an unintended way.

Not sure how to make sense of this. A flat frequency response is by definition the one that does not distort the recorded music.

If for the sake of the argument bass-heavy headphones and speakers were all the rage and a sound engineer set out to record music compensating for such devices' frequency response, then they wouldn't sound "bass heavy" anymore.