One of the things I respected about Tyll was that he didn't just review and offer opinions based on an assumption that more expensive = better. In fact at times he was highly critical of many flagship/statement headphones and whether or not I agreed with his views I did have a lot of time for him on that point. Too many hi-fi reviewers basically just seem to scratch the back of high end manufacturers with lazy reviews that start off from an assumption that if something costs $$$$$$$$$$$'s then it must be terrific. I remember his review of the Audio Technica MSR7, an excellent headphone which won't break the bank, he was decent enough to say that while the sound was a touch bright for his tastes the design was very well executed and an excellent product.
I don't buy the link between price and hi-fi performance. There are high end items that are superbly engineered, manufactured to remarkable standards and which perform wonderfully, unfortunately a lot of high end stuff in no way merits its price in terms of either design, build quality or performance. Headphones are no exception, I've listened to a few statement headphones, some were superb but even the good ones weren't so much better than good mid-fi models that you could say their performance was justified by cost if you looed at them dispassionately. And whilst designs like the Oppo PM-1 were beautifully made and really did feel very special, others weren't. I have a pair of Sony MDR-Z7's, they may not be the best headphones in the world (although I actually like them a lot) their build quality shames many headphones which cost an awful lot more. They certainly shame my T5P's despite their SRP being something like 50% of the Beyerdynamic's.
So I really see nothing silly about comparing much cheaper headphones to flagship statement models and saying that the difference isn't what you might expect from the price difference.