Seek advice on forums but always listen to your own ears!

@mahgister well said. I think it’s good to,gain perspectives from different people we all have different experiences. I tell people. That the gear I’m affiliated with I own because to me it sounded great. It might not be for everybody.  Some guys like tubes. Some like warmth. Some like hug soundstages. We all have our preferences but I have owned or long demoed at least 15 Amps in the last 20 years. I have had at least 10 pre amps and at 10 to 15 sources.  I have tried 50 different speaker cable brands. I have heard systems from 200.00 to 1.2million dollars. I try to share as much as I can. 

Unfortunately it can be hard to figure out what is good advice and what's not.

That's a +1!  Someone asks a question and five people (or there abouts) answer one way, and then another five (or so) answer the exact opposite.

Problem solving starts defining the problem, conditioning a literature search and interviewing those individuals experienced in the field to established potential cause and effect.  Pro-reviews and forum discussions are a starting point to guide on potential products that align with your personal preferences and to gain technical knowledge.  However, you must use experimental design to find cause and effect improvement.  In our hobby that is audition.  Comparative audition controlling as many system variables as possible is best but not always feasible.  Recognize the audition process will work better if you have defined your goal clearly on the improvement you want to make (problem definition, in other words).  To define the improvement you need to understand your preferences.  In conclusion, pro-reviews are excellent research tools to gain knowledge, but using your own ears in experimental, controlled auditions is the only way to make a final choice.  

Seeking advise, recommendations and suggestions from other audiophiles, whether it be from forums like this, or from sales persons at your local high end audio dealers, is just a natural aspect of being an audiophile.  We've all done it, at some point.  I know I have on many occasions.  Over the past 25 years, a combination of others recommendations and intense auditioning is how I've always built my audio systems.

You can only trust your ears if you have good ears and know what to listen for. Otherwise it can really be helpful to take advice and direction from others.

100% agree. The advice that one has to "listen for themself" is true enough, but as with a lot of other things in life, one can get better at listening. And there are better listeners out there than me -- by seeking them out, I've gotten better at doing something which seems simple, but it's not. That why this is a hobby and not just a place where people come to just blurt out that something "sounds good to them." There are criteria, specific things to listen for and notice, judgments to be made. In the end "it's up to each listener" is true, but it's a simplistic truth, which barely needs saying.