dCS Bartok DAC - Interesting Video Review

It’s interesting that GoldenSound is willing to risk his hard-earned reputation finding fault with this $18,500 DAC.

The DAC has received stellar reviews from virtually all reviewers without a reservation. However the initial Stereophile review was kind of lukewarm. It was followed by a complaint from dCS, and then another far more favorable review.

Given what’s available in the marketplace can a DAC, even with a built in streamer, be worth that kind of money?

It might be of interest to some that a thread very much like this one was pulled by Steve Hoffman over at his forum.  When I say like this one, the OP posted the negative video review and it was followed by about 16 posts.  Some of the posts favored the review; some were partial to the quality of the DAC.

Given what happened to the reviews at Stereophile, IMO it does raise again the issue of manufacturers' influence over editorial content and user commentary.