Its painful sometimes to read audiophile forums. Often you'll see people claim that FLAC audio doesn't sound as good as raw PCM. Some people seem so proud of their ignorance that they ignore the benefits instead of trying to understand.
My little $100 tripath amp and the cheap but appropriate speakers that I picked for it absolutely smoke a lot of $3000 amps (and similarly expensive speakers) that I come across and people tend to not believe unless they're blindfolded (and still try to poo-poo it when they find out how little my setup cost).
Also it crushes my spirit when people have some $10k HiFi setup and the speaker placement/room accoustics aren't right at all.
These people go out claiming these things as fact...and unfortunately there's an entire industry out there supporting and benefiting from their claims.
Seems to me that there is something people want - a better audio experience. They may actually get that by paying more, but the preferable outcome would be to get better objective quality. In fact, I think it would be preferable to even pay more to get the better objective product and know you weren't duped. I think there is probably a market for consulting:
value1 = objective_value1 + value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped
value2 = objective_value2 + cognitive_bias_for_paying_more
If it's true that objective_value2 is actually << objective_value1, and cognitive_bias_for_paying_more is not too significant, value_of_knowing_you_werent_duped could be a lucrative business.