The best reviews are professional reviewers that have experienced many components across the sound quality / cost points. They show their associated equipment and use standard high end audio terminology. Think Stereophile, The Absolute Sound and HiFi+. If you are serious a pot this pursuit you read reviews and hear as many of the same components as have been reviewed, thusly calibrating yourself to a rough standard. By listening over time to many components you can begin hearing different components within a system.
Being able to choose compatible components comes with this experience. While there are many dimensions to this… combining components that match your tastes and values in music helps move closer to compatible.
Many of us have pursued high end audio for many decades… one of the reason it can be a long term pursuit is that there is so much to learn and ultimately the problem you are trying to solve is so ambiguous.
Reviews on Audiogon are much more problematic. You have to get the context and values of the poster from the post and hopefully they’re virtual systems to understand their experience, values, and bias. For some posters it is easy, some hard.
There is a lot of valuable method and general info that is really valuable here though.
