$100,000 line stage

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. 

I agree, for $100,000 + MSRP, The chassis looks unattractive. I guess you have to compare it to a street legal race car. Very plain, just enough safety-emissions to be legal. Nothing pretty compared to a typical "dealership" exotic car.. You could compare the basic volume control to having to use actual keys to start the car instead of button, plus probably no air conditioning or power windows.
It's all under the hood