The new dCS Varese DAC...it is so good that all others are now relegated to history??

$250,000. That's a quarter of a million! Should we only decide what to purchase with excess money in the audio world? Wait. Who am I talking to? Who is DCS talking to? If somebody wanted to show me their system and it had a $250,000 digital front end, I think I'd want to walk out the front door. It's a disgusting amount of money to spend on a digital front end. I don't care how good it sounds or how rich you are, if you don't have people in your life who could use some of that money, well, talking about stereos is beside the point. You need a life.  

It is a judgement. When I go out and buy what I call expensive equipment, I judge myself. I don't have an audio budget, it all comes out of the common fund which includes wife, daughter, grandaughters. In the review, Michael Framer pronounced the quarter-of-a million-dollar wonder as good as analogue. You can buy a good turntable for ten to twenty grand. I guess at some point I see certain price points in audio as just too much. When I was growing up, my mother said, "Eat your beans. People are starving in China." (A very long time ago.) I'm sure that my friends judge me all the time for the "moderate" amount I spend on audio. My new speakers were $18K and I was gulping at that. Sorry for judging, but I do from time to time judge our hobby. 

I don't mind reviews from time to time about very expensive audio. I think it would be good, however, if the reviewer would at least nod to the readership that probably less than 1% of us will ever be able to afford this. Perhaps the reviewer could have mentioned trickle-down electronics into streamers that at least 10% of us might afford in the future. There were no nods in this review. When I was done with it I felt as though the reviewer was reviewing, from an affordability standard, a new NAD streamer. In other reviews I've read of ridiculously expensive equipment, the reviewers often nod to the super expensive price tag. 

Sometimes when I read about the equipment a reviewer has, including super-expensive substitute equipment, I wonder where they get all their money. Sometimes I wonder if a reviewer has to have a fortune to go into the business of reviewing. If they review $200K speakers, for example, they put a couple hundred thousand in front of the speakers. 

Part of the problem for me is that the $250,000 DCS streamer (if it was a streamer and not just a DAC) pretty much receives the same lauditory adjectives as a $15K streamer. Wide sound stage, great attack, all the normal compliments. 

Part of my bottom line for what I will purchase is if I leave the audition room for a half hour will I know if they've changed out the expensive component with something 1/2 its price or in case of the Varese 1/10 its price. 

In other words, as Bjork says, "Where is the line for you?" My wife would definitely ask me that. Anyway, without some sort of nod to me by the reviewer I feel left out by uber-expensive equipment that is out of the price range of everyone I know, and I live in LA among the "elites." One other problem I have with digital equipment is that it will never sound as good as my "modest" turntable with a decent cartridge.  

rikkipuu struck a nerve with me and perhaps put his finger on what bothered me about the Varese review. It was given many more pages than any other review I can remember. So many pages for perhaps a handful of readers who could consider purchasing the Varese. Not a mention that the price was more than any reviews I've read in their pages except for huge speakers.

It had a kind of cringy feeling to me. There didn't seem to be any normal human responses. Not even the oft-ending line that the reviewer would buy the equipment if he could afford it. I think it did strike me as an add and that was partly why I was offended.

Basically, I have some passing interest in very expensive equipment, but I'd rather read a review of something I could possibly buy some day. I also believe that reviewers I read twenty or thirty years ago talked about equipment a good portion of the audiophile community might be able to purchase. Now, these same reviewers go to their garage and pull out a pair of $100,000 amps, etc. Where have they gotten all this money? Certainly not writing for Stereophile or Absolute Sound.

Although the question of $ is subjective, and everybody is in a different bracket, for me $250,000 for a digital front end seems egregious. Especially when I read in forums how the difference between expensive and inexpensive DACs had diminished. Just my humble reaction.