Kondo DAC : Why no reviews ??

I spoke with Audio Note UK owner at a show. He said he doesn't care about reviews. Sometimes reviewers do a poor job anyway, so they can hurt a decent product. As a manufacturer you have to be really careful who reviews your products. Their systems are often much worse than mine IME.

If you have plenty of orders due to word of mouth, why spend money on advertising and reviews? It just increases product cost.

If your products and brand-name are unknown, then reviews are useful. They can sometimes replace the role that bricks and mortar stereo store played in the past, but should be filtered based on their system and experience.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Steve, Kondo and the products bearing the "Audio Note UK" brand are completely different, and the two companies have had nothing to do with one another for over a decade. This link will explain.

http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=general&n=37527

Pain,

You are King of buying/ trying wire so why not grap the Kondo dac and A/B it with your dac. You carry a lot of weight on the 'Gon and we all would love to read what you hear. It may even suck and then you would have to report that.

How much $$$ are they going for 80K?

Steve`s point is still valid. Kondo has such a strong market niche and following(waiting list)they don`t need to bother with the whole review/opinion/personal bias bandwagon. People who buy this brand know what they want and are getting it. The Rolls Royce analogy stated in an above post is on the mark.

Glory, even the price of a Kondo DAC is not easily available on the internet. I read somewhere that it costs about 30k. Far away from my budget. Yes if I ever get to hear one I would definitely write about it. It is interesting that not many have heard it either :-)