I have one friend who has no idea about stereo equipment, but valued my opinions and tastes enough to purchase similar equipment. He told me he could not hear the difference between certain speakers (sometimes I think I envy him for that...it would certainly save on the bank account). Regardless, he ended up buy the same brand of speakers (at the time I had Mirage M3-si speakers and he purchased the M7-si). I had moved from a house to an apartment with my wife so the M3-si (135lbs each) had to go into storage at her parents place (for 3 years!). In that time, my buddy wanted to buy my speakers from me and it wasn't until we moved into another house (small at 960 sq ft) where I realized that space was too much of a premium. I ended up selling my M3-si speakers to my buddy (they were just broken in!) in order to "downsize" to the Monitor Audio GR-60s.
He wanted the speakers only because they matched his existing speakers in form (the new Mirage speakers were a different build and shape that were not to his taste).
I loved the sound of the Mirage for two-channel music since they created a pseudo-surround experience which made you feel like you were at a concert. However, after a while you realize that, while it sounds great, it is a very diffuse sound and not localized. That is, I found it detracted from the surround sound experience with multiple speakers. I decided to go back to conventional forward firing speakers.
So here is a perfect example of one person's opinion.
I have another friend who loves his Mirage speakers (uses Rotel equipment) and will not go to a surround system because he is happy with the pseudo-surround type of sound.
To each his (or her) own. That being said, I too also like to hear discussions about different equipment and people's experiences. There is always a better mousetrap out there but with so many different opinions to draw on, it can help one to narrow down the choices (ever pick up an equipment guide from Audio magazine -HUGE! - so many numbers to look at).
