This unfortunate answer? yes. There are brands that I liked without any reason other than convinced that they sounded good. I would think that many subjectivist audiophiles behave that way too. There is a herd mentality in the HEA. Out of nowhere a brand comes and people flock to it and it, sometimes, disappears, comes another and the cycle continues... . Back in the days, in the late 80's, early 90's there was a school of "synergy", it is still around, perhaps not as strong or perhaps I haven't kept up with what's going on at the HEA (High End Audio) level: They would marry said-dark tonalities components with lighter-shade of tones, components
. And they would assign such "quality" to a brand... and, the subjective audiophiles, will believe... For example Spectral was "cold", Mark Levinson "dark", Rowland a bit "mellow", tube-like, Audio Research was supposed to be the more neutral of tubes-wares and Conrad Johnson the more "chocolatey", "velvety"... So you married a "cold" preamp to a "warm" amp, using "neutral" sources that were leaning toward the "mellow" and of couse with cables of appropriate character.... And you spent increasingly more money, lot of it, chasing that forever wrong-sounding audio system, with amplifier changes, preamplifier changes, cable changes, eventually speaker changes, you dropped without any measurements a forest of tall cylinders in your listening environment, the famous ASC Tube Traps, found out the bass lacking then bought a different cable, amp, speaker...
. Such is the madhouse in which most subjective audiophiles inhabit. It makes money for the industry, things that would be simply solved with EQ are dealt with "synergy" and ( increasingly expensive of course) components changes...
. The magazines and reviewers on their end touting every month increasingly expensive wares... keep this alive....
I did like and continue to respect some HEA brands that tend to produce components of serious quality and objective performances, among these :Magico, YG Acoustics, Revel, Bryston (they of the 20 years warranty)... There are others that I can't recall at the moment, nor do I want to
...for the most part, I would advise people to stay away from HEA brands. The level of fleecing and falsehoods in this sector is appalling.
Peace.