DCS Sending Legal Notice To Reviewer (Golden Sound) Over an Old Review of Their Bartok DAC

Much has been said here that is correct and incorrect. In any case this isn’t about free speech, but is about poor business judgment. To start, I am a dCS Bartok owner and love my streamer DAC. I bought it some years ago at probably half the price of a new one today. I also am an active participant on the dCS owners forum.

My impression of dCS management and staff are that they have been in their own little universe and believe they have unique knowledge of the digital world. Rather arrogant.   dCS was acquired in the past year or so by a large audio focused business aggregator, because, I believe, the brilliant but self involved people who run the place could not take the business to the next level. There are countless examples of highly successful companies whose founders had to be set aside to allow the business to really reach it’s full potential. The evidence of this is their attitude prior to the acquisition toward owners suggestions for product and service improvements. They exhibited a "look, we know best what’s good for you" attitude. Pleasantly, things seemed to have substantially improved since they were purchased.

Now, along comes this review. The reviewers opinion was just that, and the music he suggested as an example of the lack of irritating sound was ridiculous. Why would anybody listen to that stuff? How is that a problem? For dCS to react to those comments was just silly and a grevious mistake born of their own arrogance. I believe that review was done before dCS released a substantial software upgrade for the Bartok, which markedly improved the already great DAC’s sound quality to a level that approached the much more expensive next level dCS DAC . Cause and effect? Was dCS holding something back to assist sales of the better unit? Guess we’ll never know.

What’s next? Some serious damage control... and a visit from the audio group owners who will not be amused with what this error in judgement has done to their investment.

This to me highlights the fact that today’s consumer can’t help themselves but to believe and trust the opinions of others, who for the most part, have little to no professional credibility AND they’re gullible enough to purchase something that isn’t worth the asking price. Then, when maybe someone with credentials, or at least honesty, calls a spade a spade the chain of BS is broken and this drama ensues. Don’t know the reviewer at all, but this is what this case smells like to me at least. I’ve actually demoed the product in question and to my ears agree with the review. I’ve tried $2000 DACs that are far superior to my ears in my system. It seems DCS is in a tight spot and this sounds desperate on their part. Consumers need to do their own listening and come to their own decision.

DCS as well as Tekton both threatened what was not to their liking.

they were unhinged even threatened them  with attorneys letters.

I will not give either one a Penney , Freedom of Speech the last I looked 

was still in our constitutional law !! 

Freedom of Speech the last I looked was still in our constitutional law !!

This has absolutely nothing to do with the constitutional right to freedom of speech !! This has absolutely nothing to do with congress passing a law to limit speech.

it says "Congress shall make no law ..... abridging the freedom of speech"

Amendment 1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I watched the video of Andrew Lissimore, CEO of Headphones.com and watched Cameron provide details about dCS' actions in response to his review of the dCS Bartok.

I'm a longtime owner of dCS products including a full Paganini stack and currently a Rossini Apex DAC and a Rossini Clock.

My impression of dCS' reaction to Cameron's review of the Bartok is that dCS has dominated the digital world for decades and are now frightened they're losing their dominant position largely due to the plethora of digital product options we have.

I've never heard of Cameron before this incident, but we need more reviewers like Cameron that have an incredible depth of knowledge re: the design and execution of audio components.  Cameron's honesty and transparency is a welcome site as he was quick to post a correction to the mistake he made re: dCS use of a 10MHz clock.  He corrected this in his post by stating dCS uses a Word Clock which he seems to consider is a better option.

We have far too may unqualified reviewers that get a YouTube channel and know absolutely nothing about the internals of what they're reviewing.  So, let's not penalize reviewers like Cameron that are actually qualified to inform us of reasons we night be hearing things due to the design of the electronics and their relationship to the various graphs he provides.

Message to dCS.  Perhaps you should consider spending less effort on legal threats and more effort on R&D.