I have the same opinion, and I think it's the only way for a review and a score to be really useful. The price should not influence the score, neither to raise it nor to lower it.I have a different perspective, perhaps due to the flood of 5 stars rating on head-fi. When I started, I rely on head-fi to know if something is worth buying, and everything is 4 or 5 star “good for the price”. So would this 5 star $50 IEM touch that 4.5 star $200 so that I can wait and save up?
My approach is simple, rank things in absolute sense, and let people decide whether that’s good for money. And to give the ranking a “scale”, I compare stuffs against a few benchmarks.
For example, 4/5 in resolution (“good”) in my rating would land you on something as resolving as a Blessing 2. If you already have a Blessing 2 and you wonder whether that expensive IEM would give you more resolution, just check the resolution rating. If it is also 4/5, then it is in the ballpark at most.
That’s how I dreamed of a rating system when I started.
And of course, there can be many cheap IEMs with a much higher review and rating than more expensive ones.