Maybe you are right. Their fundamental testing ideas are flawed.

I guess it depends what they were actually testing. If they were testing to see which unit had the best sounding output then they are doing something odd.

If however they are testing what the units sound like when fed into a Meridian based system then they were probably doing the right thing. We have no context to know which they were attempting.

I used to dream of having a Meridian based system (a CD player and DAC at least), it sounded and looked so good. It all looks a bit dated nowadays.