Make some suggestions that might help the sq like setup changes, room treatment, etc. But if you know that the speaker/amp combo will never work (for example a cool sounding amp with analytic sounding speakers or warm sounding speakers with a warm sounding amp), you might make some suggestions.
As for being friendly, you aren’t critiquing his wife, it’s audio gear. I’ve been in a few audio clubs and I’ve told members that their $40k speakers didn’t sound that good or there were a couple of times a few of us were in a listening session at a friends/audio club member house for a listening session and a couple of us were holding our hands over our ears it sounded so bad and his system was over $100k.
I do the same with cars, I’ve told friends with new corvettes/bmw’s that they can always MOVE UP to a Porsche.
