I’m pretty sure that if there was such a thing as square tires, people would be debating whether round or square were better 
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OVAL!
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we offer golden ratio tires at a premium
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There are oval bike chain rings 
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So what you are implying is that between flat wounds and rounds wounds, one of the two is pure nonsense? 
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If you’re playing quickly and doing lots of string crossing, flats are a godsend because roundwounds can be very abrasive on the fingers after a while. You could try nickel plated strings because they become dead sounding quite quickly in my experience, almost flatwound-like. You will get a very similar tone but at a lower price.
Personally I would place comfort ahead of tone.
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I honestly don’t have that problem with rounds. They feel nice and smooth to me, with just the right amount of tactile sensation.
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Are you referring to stainless steel or nickel(or nickel plated)? Nickels are smoother, but even they can be a little abrasive after an hour, especially when string crossing.
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Different rounds have different textures for sure.
LaBella rounds feel the smoothest for me, Rotos the ‘cheese grater-est’, NYXLs in the middle somewhere.
Net/net, I don’t look down and see bits of shredded finger and blood all over my bass with any of them. And although I prefer flats in many cases, I do like rounds a lot for tunes they suit better or if they suit the pickups better on a certain bass.
Nothing makes me happier than finding a string/pickup combo that just sounds oh so good.
I wonder how many people get turned off a bass or strings due to a mismatch in string/pickup expectations.
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I find Fender strings pretty cheese gratery, and Stringjoy pretty smooth. Have not tried LaBella rounds yet, I’m happy with what I’ve got, which is mixture of LaBella flats, Stringjoy Rounds, and NYXL rounds. And one bass with a GHS BEAD set
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I’ve used both stainless and nickel rounds. Stainless are a little more rough than the nickel rounds I have used - primarily D’Addario EXL’s, NYXL’s, and EBMM Super Slinkys. All of the nickel ones felt great, for me probably in the order of
NYXL > EXL >> Super Slinky
with NYXL and EXL being very close in feel.
Stainless varied more; my Bass Centre Elites felt quite good, not bad at all. Warwick Reds utterly sucked IMO, felt much worse.
Not all nickel rounds are equal. EBMM and D’Addario EXL’s do tend to lose a bit of brightness over time. I have not noticed this with NYXL’s - they maintain tension and tone much better in my experience.
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Warwick Reds are appalling for sure
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I don’t know if it’s coincidence, but the B string always sounds muted and muffled using nickels but much improved when using SS on a 34 incher. For 4 string fretted I think it suits nickels better because they’re less abrasive on the fingers.
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Stainless are definitely brighter.
Most 34" 5-strings I have tried simply sound bad above the 12th fret on the B string though, and aren’t winning any prizes above the 7th. I think it’s just a characteristic of the big flubby string and the scale length vs harmonic wavelengths. Higher tensions help though - .135 vs .130 for sure, and I imagine 35" vs 34.
Short scale 5 strings are kind of interesting, I bet. I am guessing they are lucky to get good B string tone down in the money notes, much less much higher.
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@howard What would you think about a 6 string short scale? 
Revelation, in the UK, makes one (plus it’s offered in a left hand model, too). This company also has something they call “ATN circuitry,” to give the bass more musical genres.
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Same as a 5, really. 6 strings are usually BEADGC.
Short scale 5’s are not rare. In fact there’s a 5 string Ibanez Mikro at 28.5. I’ve heard it and at least the open B sounds great.
But shorties will run in to the same thing (with the B string sounding comparatively flat/dead) on higher notes as full scale basses do, just probably lower on the fretboard. I’d be curious to know how well various shortie 5’s do in that regard.
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I suppose you could go some way towards less flub by making the B string super thick and tuning it under higher tension. However, there’s only so far you can go before it’s unplayable.
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Short scale six string basses put me in mind of the Bass VI, which are tuned E-E. There’s a lot of brand options for a Bass VI
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Playing further up the neck has a similar effect on timbre to decreasing the scale length of a bass so higher frets are much darker. I have one song that I like to play that has a solo in the 14-17 fret range and it sounds more like a classical guitar sound to me.
Even on my 35in scale 5st bass I don’t like the sound of the B string past the 5th fret, I like the more open, brighter sound of the lower frets.
Just be glad basses have all wound strings or we’d have one more thing to “argue” about here 
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