Just proves this forum is hitting the spot.
In my view, yes and no! (how's that for hedging my bets...)
Yes, we concentrate on measurements, which does remove the arm-waving, uncontrolled opinions of the subjectivists, but does, (and I'm one of them) create some mild discomfort that too much weight is given to SINAD, and a few other numbers, to the exclusion of usability (subjective I know), reliability and repairability.
As someone who's whole professional life was in the pro-audio industry (Broadcasting), technical performance hasn't been of any concern for at least 30 years, as anything made since the 1980s can be taken as 'transparent'. I'm of course excluding the lunatic fringe of valve (and some SS devices) which deliberately try and be different.
We're far more concerned with facilities, reliability and reparability than technical performance, which, as I said, can be taken as read.
I appreciate that ASR can't do this with user's own items submitted for test, but one test I would like to see on every amplifier (and I do this with anything I buy for myself) is to short out the output at full power (or full output in the case of a preamp or source) and see if it survives. If it doesn't, it goes back. Clearly, any amplifier that's not advertised as short-circuit protected I wouldn't buy in the first place, but at least I would like ASR reviews to mention that in the text, and we can make our own mind up about that.
Other things like measuring the DC rails and comparing that with the voltage rating of the reservoir capacitors. I've seen amplifiers with 64V capacitors on a 60v unstabilised rail. Ditto temperature rating on reservoir caps. It would be nice to know if they're 85° or 105° especially if the device runs warm.
As to loudspeakers, I don't see that we can be doing anything different to what we are, given that loudspeakers are expensive and fragile to ship, and heaving up 'proper' i.e. large, loudspeakers onto the Kippel rig may just not be practicable. Understandably, few manufacturers are interested in sending ASR their expensive TOTL 'speakers for us to tear them apart, far better to send them to a sympathetic magazine that will give them a glowing review full of purple prose. Who wants a headless panther on their $100,000 creation...
We (as ASR) are the victims of our own success. We tear inadequate stuff apart regardless of the provenance, and shatter long held illusions. I've been accused on other forums of killing all the fun when pointing out the absurdities of others' positions, ASR does it on a rather grander scale, so more power to us.
S.