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

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.

@everyone there was also another reason for this post. Without saying actual names we had poster here that for years came on to shill and to destroy threads of people he didn’t agree with. He was consistently abrasive and disrespectful. He isn’t on here now but we have to be careful who we take advice from. What equipment do they actually have. What experience do they actually have. Are they who they say they are. Do they have experiences with the stuff they say they do. Some have accused me of being a shill because I work for a company. But the truth is the real danger of these forums is people flat out being dishonest to validate themselves in the hobby. A lot of us are OCD in audio. But there are folks that want to come on our platforms to destroy healthy debate. We must be careful. I travel to audio shows so I have actually met a few of you in person. I want to meet more of you if I’m in a show in your area. Just be careful with who you get advice from they may not be who you think they are.