I think measurements/objective data is quite important. Not in the sense of “it rates high on ASR, I should get it sight unseen” but rather in the sense of once you know what you like, and how to evaluate objective measurements, they are very helpful in separating things you mayc want to look at from things that it would be a waste of time to consider.
Doesn’t everyone? 
Sure, it’s interesting to hope that some artisan on a mountaintop can achieve much better design than a small army of highly trained professionals at a boring huge corporation. Sometimes this is the case. More often than not though it is not…