About knocking equipment. I realized early in this forum thing that one of the things I wanted to avoid, if at all possible, was making anyone feel badly about any of the equipment they owned. One way to do this is to never say anything negative about any piece of equipment. This, however is a little unrealistic, because if you don't care for, say a given speaker brand and model, people will ask you why you don't.
My solution, and I'm sure I fail to put this into practice at times, is to make MYSELF the subject of the sentence rather than make the equipment the subject. This helps to keep my comments in the "opinion" domain rather than placing them in the "fact" domain.
For example "The VP150 is sibilant and has poor off axis response" can, justifiably raise some hackles, and/or offend those who own one. "I had a problem with the VP150 because I experienced some sibilance, and had an off axis response problem," is a bit more palatable, and allows for the possibility that the problem is a subjective one, and others may have a different experience. Of course adding "YMMV," or "maybe it's just me." helps even more. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.
