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I suspect that those that are buying these products, and make no mistake, there are buyers, are not wasting their lives perusing through threads on Audiogon.

Think of it like Playboy magazine.  You wouldn't expect to see Playboy publish photos of plain looking or ordinary women would you, you know, ones you would actually have a snowball's chance in hell of dating, would you?

I read all of the audio mags as a form of entertainment.  Their writers have gone downhill, especially Neil Grader, who I always thought neutral and intelligent.  Now, he just writes the company line.  I have had the misfortune of sharing an elevator with J. Valin.  It was apparent the others in the elevator were his posse and the few comments he made were from an incredible arrogant self-importance.  I'll never look at TAS the same again.

 I read it mostly for the music reviews.  The rest is just entertainment.

I think there's very little new in circuit design, other than class D, and if you throw $1000 in parts at a good design, you've thrown in the kitchen sink, and you get a superb amp.  The rest goes to manufacturing, packaging, marketing, retail margins, and being able to pay the employees (and employees can be horrendously expensive, especially if funded from low volume runs).