Yes, this is kinda why lots of people immediately unpot (if not repot) when they get a new plant, to check out the media and roots.
I've been on and off orchiding since I was in college and maybe high school (I don't remember), but you can develop a sense of 'orchid whispering' over time. In this case, your orchids give you clues to what they need, in the color and tone of the leaves, stems, and visible roots. But, I would say that it comes with quite a few years of experience. I think I only developed it since I retired (yes, that many years). But now my plants (and not just orchids) (within my ability to provide the conditions they require) are flourishing more than ever. I used to kill paphilopediums almost instantly (over watering and then dehydrating in reaction), but I have a tiny paph spiceranum that I acquired early last month actually producing a new leaf and visible increasing in size (I hadn't looked at paph for 10-15 years) and I wonder why I had problems back then.
An exercise I would recommend, is to order either a flask or seedling sized plants several years from blooming. Grow them, they should be quite cheap, and you'll either lose them quickly or start developing 'orchid-sense'. I ordered 8 young plants of various genera from Olympic Orchids in Jan 2019. The first of them flowered just recently and I'm very proud of it. I think it gave me quite a bit of insight into proper culture (and yes I lost one of the cooler growing oncidiums out of 8). The thing is that younger plants show signs of distress much quicker than an older established plant. This allows you to more closely (in time) figure out what you did wrong. Of course, that also means unless you're on top of it, they're gonna die if you're doing something wrong. But when they flower, you know it's all yours...your credit.
I tend to inspect my orchids fairly closely about once a week (which for many adult plants is about the watering cycle for my conditions), and the little ones get inspected at least twice that often (and watered usually about the same) because 1 1/2 inch pots (esp of spagnum which I favor for most very young plants) go from being saturated to crispy in two or three days time.
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