Passionate hobbyists are often a great source of technical information, and usually more objective than industry sources. The thing to watch out for is people who have become so absorbed by their hobby, they start to put great subjective weight on distinctions that would be without difference to a "normal" person. Audio gear, gourmet food, fine wine, running shoes... It's XKCD 915 all the way down. I also recommend Penn & Teller: Bullshit! S03E12 ("The Best") on this subject.

Good for the hobbyists, if it enhances their enjoyment, but if you're a casual, microscopic variations are going to be dwarfed by other factors.

I think we're giving too much credit to audiophiles. We're talking people who might have discussions on their forums about whether audio buffers in memory allocated with malloc or in memory allocated with C++'s `new` sounds best. Stuff which doesn't have "microscopic effects dwarfed by other factors" but stuff which has literally no effect.