That's great Amir likes your preamp, but there is a lot of crap they love over on that site so to use it as a barometer for what sounds excellent is silly.
Nobdy has to uncritically swallow everything at ASR. Like any other forum you have to weed through things you disagree with or aren't interested in, to lift what is useful to you. Same here, right?
I agree they trash some gear that I personally think sounds great (for instance, Devore speakers which I love are disparaged usually on ASR).
As for Chi Fi, nothing wrong if they are offering excellent performance for the money. Unless one is xenophobic.
Amir again?
I wonder how many ASR threads there are out there?
A huge number - virtually every audiophile forum talks about Amir and ASR. Which shows the impact he has had on the current audiophile scene. The Golden Ears crowd tend to reflexively disparage his work, for obvious reasons, but a great many audiophiles appreciate it.
I have no problem defending what is good about ASR on forums like this. Whereas on ASR it's usually the opposite: I do plenty of defending the subjective reviewers, and subjective takes on gear, as well as forums like audiogon. I'm not a fan of dogmatism and close mindedness in any case.