What I'd like to see in ASR reviews are two separate conclusions: technical excellence, and audible transparency/utility. Many people obsess over and admire which cars can get from 0 to 60 the fastest, or have the highest fuel economy over various scenarios. Many of us just want to get to the grocery store affordably, reliably, and in comfort. I believe ASR can serve both performance and utility-driven objectivists. ASR is never going to satisfy all or even a minority of subjectivists, because by its very nature, subjectivism is only going to be satisfied by putting reality aside and embracing a marketing-driven approach. Other sites and some manufacturers already serve the "tell me how special my ears are and what sounds good to me on Tuesday" crowd.
What I want to know, for a given piece of audio gear, is am I likely under reasonable use and blind testing to notice any audio reproduction quality differences, for better or worse, between it and other available options? If AVR A and AVR B have a SINAD difference of 10 and the IMD is different, but the differences are generally imperceivable either before or after room correction up to normal (or even reference level) listening volume, for example, then I'd like to know so I can make an informed choice. If one AVR costs $5,000 more than another but all features and performance are audibly identical, I'd like to know.
I also like to see what liquid nitrogen-cooled 2-channel DAC has just reached 160 SINAD so I can marvel at it from a "holy crap that's amazing for $200" perspective.
I also like to know if key difference-making features (say, DIRAC support) require additional licensing, whether that licensing is locked per-device, whether it's stable, and whether it degrades audio quality. Does turning it on for a given unit reduce SINAD from 85 to 75, and can I hear the difference or is it off-set by other factors?
Are there areas of research that aren't being addressed these days
Personally, I believe that SINAD is a more useful benchmark of general quality the simpler the audio chain is and ASR weighs this in its bucket approach and in grouping AVRs separate from the 2-channel DACs. There's less going on with a 2-channel DAC intended for music reproduction than an 11.4 channel AVR that has to decode multiple audio and video formats and incorporate all the features expected of a modern AVR, while also running stable and having an easy to use interface for configuration and management. A 120 SINAD AVR is useless if it crashes and experiences weird, movie-interrupting glitches every few minutes, or if the manufacturer provides crappy support and deletes users from its forum if they fail to start their posts with "HAIL MANUFACTURER!"