TBH, I think a lot of the performance measurements in this sort of AVR review are kind of pointless for the listener. They're confirming that the money you've spent on the equipment has gone into engineered performance, but it's barely-human-perceptible performance. Almost every piece of kit is "good enough". So there probably wasn't that much point putting money into those bits. But if you're going to, may as well test you got something for the money.
And I guess if the performance is half-assed, you can infer that other things like reliability might be half-assed... It's a sign that someone doesn't know or care what they're doing.
It's a bit like the lap-time scoreboard in Top Gear - not that relevant to the average driver, but if you're going to spend a lot of money on a sports car, let's check it's a good one - you've bought a Lamborghini, not a lookalike kit car. But to be honest, most people shouldn't be spending lots of money on a car for its speed - that's not the most important thing about a car.
In AVRs, the main things that matter are functionality, reliability, lack of bugs, and power output. They're such intricate pieces of kit, you've got to concentrate on hoping to find one without some glaring functionality flaw. Only if you somehow manage to find multiple units that satisfy your needs, would I think it's reasonable to start looking at SINAD, crosstalk, distortion etc - only as tiebreaks.
It's probably only the Denon vs Marantz pairing where the measurements would be decisive, because they're actually basically the same units in every other regard. And then it's clear that the Denons win. But could people tell the difference in a blind trial? Not sure.
