What I'd love to see is a double blind lineup of various priced equipment in the same category ( preamps, or integrated amps, or speakers, whatever) least expensive to most expensive in a manageable price range played over the exact system and then have folks pick what they like. I wonder what the results would be.
Has anyone seen such a process if so any takeaways? and yea lots of intervening variables at play but this is just down and dirty for sake of discussion.