It's this very idea, that we all have different setups, that sorda proves the point I'm always trying to make (start beating dead horse here) that much of our purchase is not, simply cannot, be based purely on performance. We take so many things into consideration: How much it costs, our threshold for what performance we should get for that cost, our perception of what real performance is, how it looks, what brand it is, and probably a couple dozen others.
It's why we argue over the PS3, just about any name brand cable that costs a few bucks more than something from monoprice, seperates vs receivers (which I straddled and solved by the way by having both!) and any specs that are ever brought up about anything. It's fun living in a free democratic capitalistic society!