Before developing our own preferences based on experience, we tend to rely on the expressed preferences of others. Even later, after we have your own body of sonic evidence to draw upon (via buying & selling gear), other people's preferences are often the only way to assess some higher-level/more complex audio design with which we have no experience.
Early on I learned to read between the lines of reviews & user comments, picking out nuggets that signified something to me, that in some way resonated with my own knowledge. And especially with user comments, one must do some compiling & refining to detect trends (potential truths) across a range of comments.
