"The reality is you have misread or misunderstood comments because you're going under the impression that it's just the usual audiophile forums nonsense or something, so you end up only seeing what you want to see, and then get called up on it like before."
You've already clearly shown proof that the misunderstanding is on your part, you didn't understand a simple audio terminology in terms of 'deeper sounding' in the context of transparency and low distortion, it shows undeniably that you have been reading reviews and misinterpreting what they are trying to convey thinking that they meant 'warmer analogue sound character' which I personally believe has created a conformation bias with the device, you hear what you want to hear, I think that the PA7 is a brilliant amp for the price and what it does,
but, yet again they are known to have some issues, same with the PA5 which was known to be failing after a few months, this has happened with topping more times than I can count honestly, same the Topping L30 which got so bad they had to issue a recall as they are burning out!!
"I trust my hearing more than my vision, and I'm a photographer by profession."
What a strange comment down playing your photography skills! By my judgement your photography skills are infinitely better than your comprehension of audio (thus far), I can confidently say you are good at photography and the fact that it's your profession speaks towards that.
"You also previously questioned my desire to want to try out new stuff instead of just sticking ot what I have and being happy with that because apparently the time between getting one thing to wanting to try something else was too short, I didn't realise there was a recognised interval to which people had to adhere to before getting the desire to check something new out and keep it or return it after doing so."
I have never questioned your desire to try new stuff, that would be ridiculous, I've previously just said slow down a bit only to be able to digest the gear your testing and get to know it, a prime example would be your writing a 4k word review on the Luxsin X9 after only receiving it a couple of days prior to that, no I don't believe that is a not long enough to write a comprehensive review on a product like the X9 with it's feature set, and also acclimatise yourself with the sound, it takes time to get used to a new sound signature, general rule of thumb is usually a week to a month.
Let me give you an example,
https://mashable.com/ less tech focused than
https://www.neowin.net/ but you could arguably say that are competing with each other, here is how mashable, a
non-audiophile site tests headphones,
"When testing, to get the best sense of which headphones can actually be great to use in everyday life, we do exactly that — use them in our everyday lives. Typically, we test headphones from a week to up to a month. In our approach, we combine standardized testing that you might find in a lab with using the headphones and earbuds around our homes and outside in the cities we live in to determine which headphones are actually the best."
And that's a pretty basic site to be fair, and even they take their time.
Yes there is a slight negative overtone regarding Chinese brands, and I've clearly been open why in my last post, a lot of these companies still have yet to establish and prove themselves long term, some are getting there though like Hiby, Fiio, Xduoo Denafrips etc, I love those brands and others,
but overall they still have a way to go particularly where quality control in concerned (amps like Fosi V3 burning up), Topping amps also, as you recently discovered when researching the LA90 power amp, and after sales support to, long term support in particular, rather than just milking a cash cow by spitting out different amp and dac's all the time with minor iterative updates, there's something to be said for a component that can last decades and is supported for decades also.
B&W for example make mass produced speakers, nothing crazy special or better than other brands, but when I rang them up for a tweeter from a centre speaker that was 20 years old (LCR6 S3) they sent one out next day with an invoice to pay
after the fact, The chap on the phone said they keep spares from a lot of their earliest speakers and said to me it's always worth ringing up for parts
When the control panel fascia on my (at the time 25 year old) Rotel RCD-965BX CD player broke, to my amazement they sent me one out free of charge! I have multiple instances of this over the years, as I've stated previously this is what an established brand is sometimes able to do, and there is value in that, also for some of us there is a sense of pride that we here in the UK birthed a lot of these hi-fi brands and audio engineering, they have genuine prestige and history born from humble beginnings, am I saying you have to go down the 'conventional' hi-fi route yourself, no of course not, but try to at least understand and appreciate what these 'old school' guys have contributed to the hi-fi world, they are established for a reason.
