I think part of the confusion here arises from how badly the human ear can tell the difference between transparent electronics and amplifiers, DACs, etc that are imperfect and compromising the signal.
I think that many music listeners wouldn't be able to tell the difference between listening to a DAC with a SINAD of 75 dB and one with a SINAD of 110 dB, or a DAC with only 12 bits of linearity vs one with accuracy down to 22 bits, or an amplifier with a SINAD of 50 dB vs one with a SINAD of 85 dB or better. So they can't understand why the gear that measures so poorly actually sounds OK to them... it takes training and practice to be able to hear these things, and using pure tones to listen can often tell you more about the transparency of a gain stage or DAC process than listening to music can. All the signals and their harmonics in music can mask an awful lot of nonlinearity.
The value of making measurements is to find which gear actually adds the least to the music, the minimum amount of artifact. One may not be able to hear the difference - but at least if you are using electronics which have been shown to be changing the audio signal as little as possible, you can have some assurance that what you are listening to is actually in the recording, and not added ( or subtracted ) by your playback chain.
I provided some of the Audio-GD DACs and headphone amps to Amirm for testing that was reported here. And, frankly, when I listened to them on music I didn't hear the horrors that the testing showed. I got rid of the Audio-GD DACs and got a Topping E-50 and a Schiit Modius DAC for my various playback setups. I can't say that I heard any difference - note that I did not A/B these newer DACs against the Audio-GD units - but at any rate I now feel some confidence that my DACs are neutral and transparent.
I've done a lot of casual A/B blind testing of various DACs and amplifiers, I've done A/B between Red Book 44.1 / 16 vs "HD" 96 / 24 tracks and I found that I just could not tell any difference, either using my Stealth 'phones or my Quad ESL 57 speakers.
In the end, if you want to listen to equipment that measures poorly but you believe sounds great - that's your choice. You are responding to your BELIEF about the sound, not to the sound itself. Hearing is subjective, ears are not microphones and the brain doesn't know how to be objective. Chances are few -if any - of us can ACTUALLY hear much difference between a lot of these different amps and DACs. Some folks, with training, can hear differences which would not be apparent to most of us. And it's been shown that, in general, those that have the training and experience prefer the equipment that measures well over the stuff that doesn't make the numbers.
The other reason to measure equipment has nothing to do with how it sounds playing music, but is a measure of the HONESTY of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer says an amplifier can put out 150 watts into 8 ohms with distortion products down 80 dB ( that is THD below 0.01% ) and we measure that amplifier and it hits 1% distortion at 75 watts and gets worse from there on up - well, now we have found that the manufacturer is not being truthful with us. Should we reward manufacturers who lie to the public by spending our hard-earned dollars on their products? I would say, no we should not.