There are many other factors that can be mistaken for having to do with the rooms dips or peaks. There are dynamics, noise, phase, timing, distortion, impedence, crossovers, filters, and the list goes on. There are many other things that contribute to percieved flat response before the signal even reaches the speaker, then leaves into the room. It could also be that they don't have broadband absorption and they percieve only those sounds that arrive at the listening position that are even in decay, and everything else is just the room's resonance which might seem to add a reverberation effect rather than hearing some kind of note.