Throwing 2 High End brands together will not automatically equal success. Thoughts?

My thought is:

"Most of the time, Hi-end audio is not so hi-end after all."

And that is sad for everyone. For example give Quad ESL63 to an ATC guy and see who is happy, In hi-end audio, preferences are more important than SQ?

I wouldn’t say that I ’threw’ different brands together.  Since my budget is limited, I did a lot of homework before purchasing.  The components are made by various manufacturers - some mainstream, some boutique.  Each component is quite capable of contributing highly resolving SQ.   

I attend T.H.E. Show every year.   In comparison to some of the higher-end systems, my modest rig has nothing to be embarrassed about.   It punches far above its weight.   There’s a reason.

It is the cabling that brought everything together in a very organic way.  Synergistic Research - Atmosphere series - upper tiers.  The tuning modules and ground leads offer the capability to tweak the SQ.   It’s fascinating how these modules work - for analog & digital.   Tuning is exactly what they do.    After 20+ years of cable-swapping, these finally allowed my system to reproduce a piano as it should sound.  Well, pretty close to it.*

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* This is in conjunction with much attention to clean AC power.   

I live nearby Steinway and Yamaha piano stores that I visit often.

Agree that the system should be matched to the buyers/listeners preferences including appearance.  I like matched components for the comparability in setup and in both sound and appearance.  It has to sound good and look good for me to be happy with equipment.  I have several components from the same manufacturer and I have also mixed and matched equipment.  So I guess I’m a little from #1 and a little from #2.  Another fun part of this hobby.  

The best advice I received from a sales person representing many brands both new and used was to decide what component was I going to build my system around. I was putting together a system for vinyl. His question was do you want to build it around the source, the amplifier, or speakers. What ever I decided he suggested putting 40+% of the budget into that component then build around that. 
since I was after vinyl I built around the turntable/cartridge. My thoughts were if I can’t extract the information nothing down stream will fix that. 
Just what I did, but I don’t know shxx.

Sonus Faber + Mac:  The brands use the same distribution company so that is a reason that you see them paired up so often.  Same for Naim + Focal.  System matching is almost an art.  Listen to everything you can, understand what each sound signature is, and then go from there.