Hence my earlier point about the flaw in these threads:
They're not really based on anything that is a true test.
Even a simple blind listening test shoot out would be nice.
Instead, people have their favorites, and provide testimonials, data, test, etc, in isolation to advocate.
I find the whole nature of threads like this, basically asking for purchase recommendations, to be a weird fit to ASR; they're really better off for fully subjective places like WBF.
I see what you're saying, but on the other hand, I'd counter that the benefit of asking for recommendations on ASR is to pick the brains of people who care about objective data, even if they can't provide objective comparisons themselves. I mean, where else might one ask for recommendations and get such a high quality pool of recommendations? Surely at any other online venue we'd see some more questionable suggestions.