Esoteric DV-50: Any cdp's Significantly better?

Can't imagine that anyone would EVER place an order with Richard after reading his insulting comments.

Richard Kern's response is the stuff of which dreams are made - Alex's dreams. Nothing fuels the fires of interest, publicity and commercial success like a bit of sniping/outrage - as the success of tabloids tells us - and Mr Kern, in spitting the dummy (binky, in American) or throwing his toys out of the crib in a tantrum, has done just that. Calling potential buyers blathering, blind sheep is not smart. While I can understand Mr Kern's consternation, and applaud his honesty, I believe he has not helped Audiomod. But he probably knows that and let's give him the benefit of the doubt - he fell on his sword deliberately, on principle:)
In reality, Alex has not done anything that small manufacturers of any ilk, notably cables, have not done and continue to do.
According to Mr Kern, we, of the woolly,(pun intended) cerebrally challenged community of A'gon consumers, need a dual dose of censorship and independence, so as not to be misled by the self-promotion of modders/manufacturers. I disagree. I find the contributions of the likes of Alex and Richard Kern, and any other original designers, to be invaluable. And I would use Ralph Karsten as the role model.

711, your humor is contageous. Yet, let's all try to avoid playing at 'MY DAC'S BIGGER'N YOURS!"

Doc Luke, Audiophilia Nervosa is an extremely debilitating hereditary condition. It is more formally known as Degenerative Audiophilic Chorea (DAC). It was first recognized and described in 1989 by a team of European neurologysts, audiophiles and philosophers of music lead by Gavronsky and Pugnetti of the Istituto Don Gnocchi in Milan.
See: Aloysius Q. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky, Dr. Luigi Pugnetti et Al. Environmental triggers and sex-linked predisposition in late onset adventitious Audiophilic Dementia (Acta Medica Refutata, vol 35, No. 4, pp. 435 - 459. Appenzell, 1989).
The authors describe DAC as a acute disturbance of the central nervous system, usually having an onset in very early middle age and characterized by involuntary muscular movements, uncontrollable usage of credit cards, increasingly severe and expensive delusions, disastrous lapses of financial common sense, and general progressive intellectual deterioration, accompanied by often mewlings, drewlings and ritualistic genuflection and prostration in front of any gleaming audio component.
DAC attacks the cells of the basal ganglia, clusters of nerve tissue deep within the brain that govern coordination, as well as the cortex, which is expected to govern common sense.
The onset is insidious and inexorably progressive; no treatment is known.
Psychiatric disturbances range from personality changes involving compulsive purchase or modification of audio equipment, in the abscence of which the sufferer experiences apathy and irritability, to manic depressive or schizophreniform episodes when away from one's audio components for any significant amount of time.
Motor manifestations include flicking movements of the upper extremities, towards credit cards and compulsive signing of any audio sales slips, a lilting gait, in front of high-end audio stores, and motor impersistence (inability to sustain a motor act such as tongue protrusion), unless ever-more-frequent and progressively expensive upgrades to the patient's audio system are applied..
In 1989 the gene responsible for the disease was located by Schmaltzenstein-Gavronsky and Pugnetti; within that gene a small segment of code is, for some reason, copied over and over.
Genetic and audio counseling is extremely important, since 50% of the male offspring of an affected parent inherit the gene, which inevitably leads to the disease if the subject is exposed to any high-end system worth of such an appellation.
An autosomic recessive form of the disorder likely also exists, but is very rare, according to the scant epidemiology studies of DAC, as far less females than males are affected. The prognosis is rather bleak. Sufferers invariably end their days divorced, indigent, externally semicatatonic, with a silly grin on their faces, while immersed in a permanent REM state, dreaming of evermore extravagant system upgrades.

Wow, I think I have DAC!! Is there a cure for it, Doctor?

Guido,I am so relieved that we can talk about this openly and sensitively. My name is Phil and I have DAC. My Dad had it too. He had tube gear that he built himself and a bozak speaker (tweeter suspended in the middle of the midrage driver) installed in the door of his bedroom closet, with a 15" woofer installed in something the size of a dish washing machine. He kept muttering: Infinite baffle, infinite baffle. My poor Mother. My poor neighbors. Dad would play his system at realistic levels. Being an engineer, (read: original propeller heads) he played a test record with a train comin' on down the tracks. One of our neighbors apparently made a mess of himself when he stood up suddenly upon hearing said train coming through the wall of his bathroom. The shame of it! This was a decent, middle-class neighborhood. Yet, how I loved Sunday mornings when my father would blast his classical music. We were eating downstairs in the kitchen, but the sound was at concert levels.

Guido, I know there is no hope for me (I have an order with Alex, that evil modder and facilitator of our sickness, that self-promoter who dedicates himself to this work by sleeping but a few hours a night and then has the unmitigated gall to be proud of his work!). I can only hope others escape this terrible fate. I hope to pass my remaining days in audio nirvana, but a shell of my previous virile, aggressive, unhappy self.

Phil