Does hearing the best in high end audio make your opinions more valid?

Some times I wish I hadn't heard a great sounding system because it makes me a bit too critical listening to other systems, in particular my own.  I will also say if you do enough research there are people making amazing components, speakers, wires, tweaks, etc at reasonable prices (even cheaper buying used) and a bit of DIY you can create a wonderful system easily besting systems at 10 times the price you would of heard at a show.  

To be clear, take retail price of a very expensive components and put them together with out much thought vs. buying equipment that is great value, get it used and then spend time researching and experimenting  to make sure the components have synergy together and then do some upgrades like replacing capacitors.  This takes time, years.  What do you think the price difference would be.  My main point is there is a large variance across systems in terms of performance vs price.