Unusual TAS bomb

Does anyone here honestly think that Audio Research would put out a new piece of equipment one level from the previous piece if they didn't feel that it was superior? People that owned the DAC 7 would do a direct comparison with the DAC 8 before buying and hear for themselves. I would think that AR would have a few DAC 7 units around to A/B compare with the DAC 8. I read the review and even listened to a DAC 8 and I have to tell you, it sounded wonderful to me. At the Store (Stereo Design in San Diego), we A/B'd it against an older Mark Levinson CD/DAC combination, so the comparison wasn't exactly fair, but I was deciding on whether to buy the older Levinson unit and wanted to hear it against the new DAC 8. The DAC 8 was warm and open to me. I think something else is going on with the reviewer. That review was entirely too negative and having heard the unit and knowing the quality of Audio Research products, I would not trust that review and go listen for myself.

To be fair you see this kind of writing in other hobbys. I like cars like many others it is a rare day indeed when a car that isn't a family sedan gets a mild panning. Otherwise everything is pretty positive some writer will alude to a somewhat better function in the competion but saying a car completely sucks is out of the question. Lets also be real the mags depend on adverstizing and if I were a company exec I wouldn't appreciate serious criticism, and if it persisted would stop advertizing. Some measure of reality must be injected into the discussion. As a hobby we don't really have disinterested reviewers, after all the reviewer is usually an owner and might try to justify the purchase of whatever it is he is reviewing. Not always but fairly consistantly.

Audio Research, they simply needed a segue to the DAC 9 Reference Special Edition.

Bashing the audio press is silly. I don't listen with my eyes so they can say whatever they need to say. For $12 a year the periodicals are great fun.

I'll start by saying I'm not a fan of TAS reviews. Not only do they frequently not compare the piece under review to anything else -- which I almost always find to be the most helpful section of any review -- but in the associated equipment area they list every piece of equipment in their system EXCEPT the corresponding component in their system. This strikes me as not only irresponsible but downright cowardly.

That said, at least in this review the writer bothered to compare the DAC 8 to something else, even if it was just a previous version of this DAC. He also took the time to take the DAC to another system to see if it might be a system synergy problem and also had ARC check the unit to see if it was up to spec. So I'm left with giving the guy credit that he was honestly conveying what he heard, and right or wrong it's at least out there for people to keep in mind when they audition the piece. I can't believe I'm sort of defending a TAS review. Ick.

Anyway, the reason there aren't many negative reviews out there is that stuff has gotten so good overall you rarely find a piece that really just doesn't at least pretty decent in many respects. So you're left with relative differences and individual positives/negatives (hence my comment above on the importance of product comparisons) that can be preference and system based. I've had lots of stuff in my system, and through it all there have only been two pieces that if I were writing a review it would be truly negative. On top of that, publications tend to pick equipment that comes from the better manufacturers who tend to know what the hell they're doing or that already has a positive buzz around it in the public domain, which further cuts down the potential to review one of the true dogs on the market.

So while I may have my doubts about the reviewer's findings, I do believe he was honestly conveying what he heard and if I were going to audition a DAC 8 I would appreciate having them as part of my frame of reference as something to at least watch out for. Ick. Now I need to go take a shower.

I still can't fathom the writer finding it unmusical, as I said above I listened to every available DAC at the time ( most at home ) and found the DAC 8 the best by far and the most musical. I found it less warm than the tube DAC7, but less colored and more natural, more like analog. Mine is hear to stay, err , did someone say something about a DAC9 Ref ?