That's because there is no standard terminology. Even in the ridiculousness of wine tasting there are charts to describe the flavors, but audio has vague terms like veiled, dark, crisp, shrill, dynamic, boomy. The inexperienced don't know any of this or what it means. And the experienced just take a guess.
When I was TV shopping I could say about Panasonics "the greens aren't realistic" and people would easily know what I was talking about. Audio needs to be defined the same way. For instance, "male voices sound chesty" to account for a particular flaw at a particular frequency in speaker design.
As far as electronics, cabling and whatnot, well having been through blind tests, I don't believe there is a difference in sound (given the standard spiel about used within specifications), so I can't help you there. I just refer them to Roger Russell's chart for speaker cables and stay out of the other debates.