Actually a pretty good question.
When I opened my shop in 1973 I asked the same questions. SO, luckily, I had a shop full of gear from high-end manufacturers (and some middle-range and some used high-end stuff).
SO, I brought in my trumpet and my guitars. FIRST, I hooked up a basic system and swapped out speakers one pair at a time. Took me almost a month. I never had to pick up an instrument during this phase. It was pretty obvious that my favs from college--stacked Advents--were, to be kind, not that good. Nothing against Mr. Kloss--he was clearly a genius and his speakers were terrific for the time. BUT, next to other stuff they showed their weaknesses easily, as did many others that we carried.
Rather than bore you with the whole journey, what I learned was that different designers had different price points, thus compromised as you would expect. This ain't a charity--this stuff was made to be SOLD for MONEY. No money, no stuff.
Following an extended listening process, I was lucky enough to sell Audio Research and Magnepan products. We also had Marantz and McIntosh for a while--long story.
In the end, there was no doubt--the Audio Research stuff on the Maggies were a revelation in reproduced sound IF the source material was solid.
Now, this combo did NOT sound as good in some customer's rooms for whatever reason, but we had lots of good stuff for them as well. Given the better rooms, that combo was clearly the most accurate and remains so today.
Cheers, and happy listening.