These arguments are so ridiculous it's not even funny anymore. Arguing which amp sounds better and why is like arguing what shade of blue the sky is at 6pm just after a rain storm. It's so subjective, that there is no answer. More power? Sure, you think it should be louder, but the fact that our ears hear different frequencies at different "loudness" levels even if the measured SPL is the same confuses things even more. 130 dB at 80Hz will make a pile of rumble and may or may not sound loud, but 130 dB at 8000Hz will make most people run for their lives in pain. There is certainly a log rhythmic increase of cost for improvement in sound quality. The difference between a $700 Mackie mixer and a $1500 Soundcraft or A&H mixer might be quite noticeable to many people. The difference in sound quality between a $15000 Midas and a $100,000 mixer not 1 in 1000 people would be able to tell which is which in a blind audio test. Once you get to a certain point there's probably a .00001 % of the worlds population that can even tell the difference. The differences in amplifiers is probably much much less than that even....simply because there's only so much to an amplifier. A mixer is much more complicated and more components can have an effect on the sound. I would bet $1000 that if you took 100 engineers and setup an A/B blind comparison between a low end QSC amp and a Crown iTech and matched the voltage output of them both that the results would be 99% random. Sound is as subjective as beauty, or color, or political opinions. Someone will think it sounds incredible, and someone else might leave the show because the sound is so bad it's giving them a headache.
Name brand equipment is for people who have to fill riders, and to compare another subjective thing like customer service and reliability. The only people who know how reliable products actually are is the manufacturer that keeps track of repairs, and I'm guessing they don't share that information readily. I can find someone who's had 10 Behringer amps for the last 6 years running 5 nights a week without one failure, or someone with a Midas board that has to go in for repair at least 3-5 times a year.
Find tools that you are comfortable with and work the way you expect them to or are used to. You'll get the best sound you can that way. If you use an EQ with a constant Q of 1.5 and change to another brand that has something different and different circuitry it will react differently to what you are used to inputing for correcting that snare drum ring, or nasaly vocal tone, etc...
One last thing about "punchy" bass. What the heck does that mean in reality? Most people, including a lot of engineers think to get a great kick drum sound you need subs that go to 20Hz flat(OK I'm exaggerating a little), but that "kick in the chest" feeling is usually in the 60-80Hz range, and in all actuallity the first harmonic of 120-160Hz is where most of that feel comes from. you can EQ the crap out of a kick to get it to feel where ever you want I suppose, and kick drums obviously get tuned different and can be as big as a house or smaller than most floor toms, but this dream that you need to go super low to feel the kick in a live sound application is just flat out a lie. Compressed recordings are a completely different animal, so if you're a DJ don't listen to me...heh.