Please do yourself a favor by not purchasing gear based on how it measures. Take the Asgard 3 and Modius for example as some of Schiit’s best measuring products. They are awesome, but the Lyr 3 and Bifrost 2 is an upgrade in every fathomable way despite not coming out as impressive through the same tests. This was my path over the course of several months and it was totally worth it. There is a good thread going over this stuff here if you wish to discuss the importance of measured data from gear.
I would even propose the idea you’re more true to the original recording than ever going tubes. After getting the CTH + SDAC on a huge sale, I sold my JDS Atom + OL dac within a week because it simply couldn’t do layering and staging like the hybrid. The new experience was shocking enough to the point of telling myself the headphones collected over time suddenly sounded like they were worth the price paid for them. And that tube hybrid is quite neutral. It wouldn’t be a surprise to me if most popular OTL tube amps measure poorly as well. I encourage you to watch Andrew’s review for the ZMF Pendant on The HEADPHONE Show. That guy is an absolute champ among objectivists reviewing headphones off of incredible gear like the SPL Phonitor X and ifi Audio Pro iDSD dac.
These forums are a place where people can freely talk about whatever they want being open to any kind of source gear. And no one should feel pressured to have a reference combo to review a headphone.
On the topic of headphones not being able to reproduce music like speakers, this is true in many cases. I’ve noticed with my only OTL tube amp the benefits of songs optimized for speakers come alive in the expanded stage both in width and depth. Not saying it’s on par being in the middle of a full system in a room, but you get way closer to it for sure.
TLDR; don’t become part of the mob mentality it’s absolutely the best option to always go for clean measuring set ups. Those people are bad for the hobby of exploring music in different ways.