alt Hacker News> Speakers were never subjective (unlike earphones)
I don't think this has been true in my lifetime, at least. Some brands being known for "warmth" vs "brightness" is ages old, before the idea of audiophile earbuds was even a thing. At the extreme end, you can go back at least 40 years to see people with dedicated sub outputs and massively-oversized non-flat subwoofer setups.
Sure but they’ve always been mastered with the same setup, so the bar has not changed. And anything flavoured will not work universally for all types of music or other kinds of audio (like voice calls are really hard to understand with bassy speakers).