If you are buying for you, then that's all you've got.
For reviewers and creators of hifi you have a good point - they may be deaf after all these years listening at too high volume - and reading some reviews that kinda makes sense! A 60 year old will perceive a different sound to a 20 year old, but then again, half way between these extremes I can discern differences I could not hear when I was 20 - not because me ears are better - they can't be, but my brain is better trained to listen than it was then.
There is a lot of fact, fiction and downright BS spoken about music, all in good measures. Its a mine field that the magazines and industry don't want cleared, because it sells product. On top of that you have personal preference. And on top of that, your perceived personal preference and your actual preference. I have fallen down this one, asking for one thing and realising that perhaps I preferred something different in style to what I thought I did because there is no standard way to describe sound.
There is no absolute in music, so the ears play a much lesser part than at first you may think. Although if you have clinical hearing loss, you are clearly at a disadvantage and should not be designing hifi or writing professional reviews.
At fear of causing fury, I would suggest, by way of example, that LP's cannot give a more accurate rendition of sound compared to CD, simply because squishing a bit of hot plastic between some metal plates, and then playing the result by skitting a bit of crystal over the undulations created and pushing this tiny signal through an RIAA pre-amp cannot elicit a flat, accurate frequency response. Lab accurate no. Preferred by many, yes.