I prefer to not let myself be influenced by others confirmation and cognitive biases.
I don't consider gear a hobby. I consider achieving the best sound at an acceptable cost/benefit ratio a hobby. The gear itself is meaningless to me. In fact, the less gear, the better. My main source currently is Amazon Music HD via an Echo wirelessly straight into a preamp, so no CDs, LPs or hardware streamers.
Knowing how to read graphs, and understanding through measurements what is audible to the human ear and what is not allows me to "filter" gear before wasting my time with it. I don't consider it time well-spent to listen to something that measurements show obviously won't sound any different to my human ears.
The most straight out admission of confirmation bias I've yet read.
All the best,
Nonoise