How important is a flat response?

What are we trying to do here?
We are trying to experience the spark in the composer's mind expressed by the music made by an orchestra (or Jimi's Strat). Having a flat system response tells us one thing; How well the recording engineer was able to put the performance onto recordable media.
This should be ALL a system is required to do (and look pretty too).

Most people won't have a clue how flat or at what frequencies they have peaks & nulls, even with some kind of oscilloscope or Rives-like device.

Just mode the mike up, down and sideways by 6 inches and you will see significant changes in the response. It's an inexact science at best.

But .. from what I understand from experts they advise leaving the nulls alone and simply try to trim the peaks. First off, it's far easier to do this. And secondly, something about artificially boosting nulls that gets real tricky and causes all sorts of other problems. This is probably why room treatments tend to be sound absorbing (in general terms, of course). The best way to fill nulls at your listening position might be to find out where they are strongest in the room and try some kind of deflection technique to spread them a bit more eavenly.

Enjoy the process - it's definitely daunting.
Bob

I second what Ptmconsluting wrote.

Ethan Winer is a noted acoustician and here's a link to a discussion forum he moderates. Notice the graph of the bass response in his personal room. It's definitely not flat. Room modes make it virtually impossible to attain flat response.

I am using a panasonic digital receiver and philips 963 dvd player with Piega p10 speakers using home depot cables. Could the equipt. have any effect on the response? I am getting a Rowland concerto in 2 weeks and better cables. I will test it out when i get them hooked up. Any body used the parc device? How dramatic was it? I thought i heard a review and it said it was effective but "subtle".

Of course equipment can influence response. Much of the peaking comes from the speakers, speaker-room interaction, and amp-speakers coupling (usually less so). You have good speakers.
Look into the room & speaker placement to reduce modes.
You want to trim the peaks. Leave the "valleys" alone for now:)
However, wait till you get your new amp, to see what's going on there.