No I highly doubt that. For me, it doesn't matter because there is no logic in believing and/or influenced by such subjective views. Yes, I would make exceptions from time to time for specific reasons, but in general, there are always going to be people who will hear better sound quality from one, while others will say the opposite. Who are you going to believe? I think it usually one would naturally believe or influenced more by the reviewers if the one heard similar things before from other more popular/prolific reviewers, and/or have read marketing material that one thought make sense to him/her. I believe in facts and science much more than any (or almost any) subjective reviews. We know ears and brains get influenced/bias easily, don't we?
Even if the subjective reviewers did hear what they claimed to be better sound or musical sound, what exactly does that mean? You really don't know if you would feel the same, people don't always prefer the same thing anyway.
Those who actually designed, tuned, build the products, always have their preference too as they are also humans, that's why their goals should be, and likely are, to aim for neutrality, and let the users use tone control, EQ, RC to suit their taste if they want to. To design for a certain "sound signature", may please some, while losing other potential buyers (that's if such alleged sound quality is easily audible). It would be difficult to predict which kind of sound signature will be most popular as there are just too many permutations of frequency response curve, distortion profile, dynamic response etc., such an approach won't likely be good for business in the long term. Marantz has been exceptionally successful in marketing, but even them don't sell anywhere near Denon and Yamaha's, who are not overly aggressive in selling their own "claimed sound signatures". I actually like their products, and I owned 5 Marantz products (AVPs, preamps, power amps) in recent years, and still own 3. As Amir said in an video interview, I don't remember his exact wording, but it was something about telling the interviewer that the Marantz units he measured did not have enough distortions for them to have the sound signature that people talked about, will try to find that video for you so you can hear his exact words.
Here is one of those videos that I made exception for, and watched it from beginning to end. The one I would trust his opinion more is Erin, yet he never said a thing
in this video. The other 3 seemed too busy trying to agree with each other (groupthink?), and didn't even know the fact that the Denon and Marantz being compared actually have the same 13 channel processing, they thought Denon can do 15 vs Marantz 13, totally false! The fact is, both can process 13 only, or 15 if you count the two independent subouts. Now those 4 gentleman, with due respect, are the better one, especially Erin, who is more of an objective kind of reviewer anyway. At least in this video, they, the subjectivist leaning bunch, did say they thought in a blind test it would be tough to tell a difference between the two devices, despite the HDAM thing being a potential reason mentioned for audible difference.
I think I have read enough reviews on the C50 and the LX505 including the soundandvision one, now may be you can watch a couple of videos and see if anything might change your mind a little.
By the way, found the video in which Amir mentioned his conversation with Marantz about the HDAM/Marantz sound, it was very easy to find some reasons.
For his exact words, fast forward to the 7 minute mark:
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