$100,000 line stage

Thanks for the link. If I were a high paid athlete, I would be all over this stuff

Well perhaps the take away from that review is, how important a good preamplifier is. This piece is often just an afterthought. 

The Audio note from Japan is better and costs less not cheap though but a wonderful sounding preamp probably one of the best out there.

Why so judgmental of how other people choose to spend their money?

Because 99% of them are just "glitz queens", who have no idea of what good sound is and how to achieve it. They think because it looks a million dollars it must sound good and argue the point without any merit..

Cheers George.

Funny, I always said that the hand made units I make would be $50K if a well known audio manufacturer made them!  Looks like a point-to-point wired unit.  Chassis is subpar for a $100K unit and so it the volume control.  Power supplies are robust.  Chokes and transformers look to be quite expensive.  The $100K is a suggested price.  Cost to build without labor maybe $10K???   Selling only to people with very high end systems who can afford these toys.  BUT it all comes down to how it will perform in a system and what that person values for sound.  What if it was just all out 50% to 100% change in a system.  What would that person pay for that improvement.  Most of you know that I build DHT DAC and Preamp.  Recently compared my R2R discrete to a Chinese knockoff.  While at first listen the Chinese sounded good, in comparison there was a significant improvement in space, vocals, texture, tone, etc.  What is that worth if the Chinese unit costs $2500?

Happy Listening.