We are buying and reviewing gear all wrong

Home theater stores are closer to offering "package" audio systems, and many new-home buyers are excited about having every room wired with wall or ceiling speakers.  If that's not enough, you could also hire a life coach and an interior decorator.  Why make all the hard decisions?  

The joy is about liking to listen.  And liking to listen to other systems.  Yet I would be bummed if I could not A/B test speakers or amplifiers every now and then and revert back if I wasn't super-happy with an upgrade and talk to someone about it.  Hence the desire to tweak and yet bleed money for the price of something unachievable at any cost.

I always admired those focused on the curation of the media and the particular performance.  Yet enter digital.  Fights now ensue over which $100K DAC makes a 4TB library of 'stuff' sound better and in what resampled format without mention or knowledge of when recorded, how many recordings are known and their scarcity.

To me, an audiophile takes as much time preparing to listen (and share) as they do listening.  Some claim it's about the music and being all about social is ruining today's music.  As I see it, without social, you are unwilling to give another voice or taste a listen.  If you have an integrated system that sounds great to you, and you are really exuberant about how great it is rather than what it cost, I will listen and many others will too.

Bryston offers complete systems.  Excellent quality audio equipment and backed up with a twenty year warranty on most of their line.  Yup !  Twenty years and it doesn't matter who owns it as long as it goes back to them in the original shipping box. That alone separates the men from … well from anyone else in the audio business.  

Designing speakers is different, more art than in designing electronics, and different arts require different talents.
Gryphon also makes everything except turntables. If you like this kind of sound and have the funds - go for it. Gryphon or MBL ? Hmm, probably neither for me, I view speakers as both devices and musical instruments, but electronics and cd player - Gryphon.

This is the problem with the whole "just listen to what it sounds like" argument and opposition to measurements. Listening doesn't necessarily correlate to the complex interactions of different components. If you look at what the individual parts actually measure you can get some idea of what their interaction will be like. The problem isn't with the review process. The problem is with the interpretation of the information. Folks want to take opinions on what a thing sounds like in a few circumstances and make sweeping generalizations regardless of what the physical properties of the component are. That's upside down. It leaves you doing nothing but guess work. It's entirely possible to assemble a good sounding system based purely on measurements having never heard any piece of it. It's practically impossible to do that cobbling together components based on some compilation of opinions. I don't have the ungodly piles of money some if you do to just throw components at the problem. I have to be very analytical and figure out what measurements produce the qualities I'm looking for. It seems to be working well for me. I don't know why more people don't do that and lean on reviewers and manufacturers to produce and provide those measurements.