Grant - your car metaphor ain't working for me. There are really precious few 'underground' car manufacturers. There are, however, a great abundance of audio maufacturers who produce great stuff who operate without benefit of much advertisting - some with none at all. Much of the reason is that it is much cheaper to manufacture audio gear than it is an automobile (re: "Who Killed the Electric Car", and "Tucker"). I do agree, that a premise for buying like that is a bit silly, but then again, why not...it does not surprise me at all. To each their own. There's plenty of good manufacturers out there who don't advertise and many products that never get reviewed. I agree, eliminating one simply because they do, or they don't seems a bit silly...BUT, in defense of that, I do believe that manufacturers who do advertise absolutely need to charge more for similar products in order to pay for an advertising budget. I'd never heard of the manufacturer of your DAC till you told me about it (thanks again, BTW). If all of a sudden that manufacturer started running regular ads in Stereophile you can bet he'd have to raise his prices to pay for the ads. I like the internet review sites because they seem to seek out some of the more unsung heroes of our hobby, and surely many of those make it more affordable than the utterly ridiculous levels it's reached. I think they are able to do this largely because running an eZine is cheaper than running a magazine with national distribution that depends entirely upon advertising to exist.
Mr. Tennis - some interesting thoughts, as usual. I don't think it will ever come to be that advertising will have no effect on buying whatsoever (that people will be able to ignore that input entirely). I think that's impossible. We're always bound to make meaning out of every little input and detail about a product, whether conscious or subliminal. That may or may not include actual functional and or logical features. Sometimes insignificant features like color, size, materials, typography, design, weight, among many others details, may come into play, whether we know it or not. Advertising is just taking advantage of all that. I'd venture that we'd be doing it anyway, even without advertising. We don't live in a vacuum. Though we might be more prone towards the logical facts of function, I still think we'd be making judgments on all kinds of other silly details. That said, I agree with your underlying premise: "get the facts and then decide for yourself"
Marco
