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RE: Keep your hands where I can see them while you take off that tinfoil hat!

There is, I think, a more benign explanation for all this. And it is based on an idea that, I would imagine, both Mr.Hansen and Stereophile share. That idea is the notion that things in audio land are always improving. There are exceptions, to be sure, but in the main, everything is getting better. Why else would people want to read about new stuff, much less buy it?
There's a long history that supports this: the rise of transistor powered electronics (no output transformers-yay; no tubes to burn out), CDs (no more flutter & wow; no more pops and clicks), SACD (no more "digititis") and so on. Each of these improvements was widely heralded when introduced (if memory serves, the sainted JGH was an early fan of CDs).
So, if Stereophile and other audio writers can be said to have a bias, I don't think it's because they are "bought and paid for," it's because they share — with the proponents of these new technologies— a desire to celebrate "the next big thing."
That they sometimes prove to be wrong is not, IMHOP, proof of their corruption; rather it is proof that, they, like the rest of us, carry with them a bag of hidden prejudices, assumptions, etc. of which they are mostly unaware.
Regarding the original topic of this thread, I agree with Mr. Hansen's criticism. Mr. Austin's review seemed hastily written and cries out for some editing. When I worked for a big metropolitan daily paper it was not uncommon for our stories to come back from the City Editor with a raft of handwritten questions that he wanted us to answer before he would send it along to be set in type. And why begin a review of a DAC with a rant about the high end's most sacred cow: insanely expensive wires? Mr. Austin may have a point, but does it belong in a review of a DAC?


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