I'll chime in just once. We have been following the research as well and though there are indicators that FR at DRP is a large contributing factor to the listening experience, the notion that it is the be-all and end-all is far from conclusive.
This is something we have tested internally because if it was in fact the reality we would just close shop. No point investing this amount of time and energy if that level of performance can be achieved purely through FR. By that notion the most effective means of achieving TOTL audio would be TWS with a reasonably low distortion driver and full DSP. Or get a Q5k with any budget chi-fi and EQ with sweeps to your personal HRTF and be done with it.
And in fact that's the exact thing I did with several IEMs both budget and high-end. EQ them with sweeps, white noise and music to as close as I could get to STORM, while cross-referencing measurements on a both a 711 and a KB501x equivalent. The counterclaim is that this can't be done without measurements with the specific IEMs with my personal HRTF, but this is as close as I can get with the resources on hand. The listened experience tonally was within margin of error closer than 1db variance compared to when we're doing listened QC after doing measured QC when we batch our IEMs. Either way, what myself as well as the rest of the team heard when we did this led us to continue our development. I think a quick test anyone can do is just EQ a low pass on STORM with a 5db reduction on everything after 10k as suggested by Resolve's 5128 measurement and you'll find that a lot of the resolving ability is retained, still surpassing most IEMs with more upper treble energy, sustained or otherwise. Curiously enough our internal definition of true resolution is ability to render detail sans frequency response. Meaning to say that if the detail can be EQed in or EQed away then that perceived "detail" was artificially induced to begin with or brought to attention via FR emphasis as Resolve described.
I think my two takeaways from the objective space of the hobby in general are 1) I like that it's pushing for more research, because research as it pertains to better understanding our psychoacoustic system with regards to experienced sound quality and understanding of the correlation between in-ears, earbuds, headphones and speakers has been sorely lacking. The 5128 standard has been huge leap in this aspect but I still don't think averaging a population sample in the way that it was done is particularly effective for IEMs. I also like that the objective space better aligning the research space with industry in aspects to index for. And in general the more quality data we have available the more we are able to improve what we make.
And 2) I really don't like the dismissal of qualitative inputs, just as I don't like the dismissal of quantitative representations and data. I think it's quite foolish to presume that millions of years of evolution in our auditory system and our brain's ability to do signal processing can be captured in a single metric. While the current research does support this idea to an extent and point in the general direction of FR at DRP being a huge contributing factor to perceived sound quality. I think it's far from conclusive that it's the only relevant metric, and to presume so is quite foolish and arrogant in my opinion. I think that research in any area, and especially in understudied niche areas like audio as pertains to sound quality, has a tendency to go through cycles of accepted schools of thoughts before new paradigms are introduced. Historically research in any field is based on research that has previously been done and as such has a precedented tendency of having some inbuilt confirmation bias, so that's also something that is worth considering. Bias against qualitative data as inferior to quantitative data is also a particular sore spot for me as it has delayed research in mental health by decades, something that has affected me personally, and has also resulted in things like reports of pain and symptoms by minorities being more commonly dismissed, resulting in systematic level corrective changes taking far too longer than needed to be implemented because qualitative evidence wasn't taken seriously. Of course that's not to say that all subjective opinions are equally valuable, relevant or valid, but simply that those that considered and deliberate in controlling for variables should not be so simply dismissed.
I think a simple question we can ask is what we want out of this hobby, and by extension why we make the purchase decisions that we do. If you do buy into the idea that FR at DRP is everything, then great, the natural conclusion to this assumption is buy a $300 Topping stack or Q5k with any cheap, low distortion transducer and EQ with sweeps to your preferences and quit. Why buy Susvara when there are cheaper Hifimans that essentially measure the same. Or why buy any modern amp, dac or cable when all of them have essentially zero impact on frequency response. Soundstage is also not a thing so just buy a cheaper IEM for the most bang for buck. Congratulations, you've just saved yourself a ton of money and concluded audio, and 95% of the headphones.com store is now irrelevant to you and spending a dime more is a fool's errand.
But for the rest of us that's not enough, and we'll have our fun continuing to explore the space. With our money. That we earned. That we are spending. You have finished audio and that's great, feel free to see yourself out. But for the rest of us there is still plenty we'd like to explore and continue to chase our unicorns of "perfect" and "better", whether anyone else sees it as placebo or not, my listening enjoyment and the peace and happiness it brings is enough for me.
Also mods, I think this discussion is an interesting and healthy one to have but I'd like to humbly request it be moved to a separate thread if it continues so as not to detract from the STORM discussion