HP mainly dismissed measurements as long as they were not grossly bad and used his ears to judge equipment.
Ears are better than measurements. Alas, no reviewer I know uses just their ears. They use their brain, prejudices, incorrect testing protocol, etc. to arrive at conclusions that have little to do with the sound that came into their ear.
They get lucky that their hear, and that of audiophiles is very poor and not sensitive to non-linear distortions. So even when they recommend equipment that readily distorts the sound, the person following their advice likely doesn't hear it. Instead they are biased by their recommendation to think it sounds better. And it does until placebo wears off and the audiophile chases the next piece of gear.
As to the video, it is excellent but we follow the same advice given. My distortion ratings are always next to FFT showing the spectrum of the distortion. And I routinely comment on that spectrum in my reviews. We are not hooking up a dumb THD+N meter like people used to do years ago.
Finally, there is a point in distortion and noise where we can declare a piece of equipment as audibly transparent. Once those distortion spikes and noise get below threshold of hearing, you can have confidence that no human being can hear those artifacts. In sharp contrast, the unreliable subjective review may not apply to a trained listener who is much better than the reviewer in hearing such artifacts. This point is often lost in criticism of THD+N.
