Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

apart from what @sns said, I would like to add that Musician is not the first company that GIVES and will not be the last. I won't go into names but there has been American company who does the same. So this is not out of the blue. There are so many professional reviewers' listening room is cheap and a mess that they can't even have proper room treatment and yet they own expensive speakers, amps and not to mention multi-thousand $ cables. Its hard to digest that they buy them at the same price a normal consumer would.

So right debjit_g, why I don't give so called 'professional' reviewers much credence. They mostly all have agendas, and also the other liabilities you listed. Everyone should also realize negative reviews may gain notoriety for the reviewer, and the product being reviewed  Better to be talked about than not talked about, I'm sure everyone knows about Tekton and Raven.

Beyond reviews, another good way to judge quality of equipment is many internal photos. Parts used, layout can give one a clue to quality of component, specifications can be helpful in spite of those averse to them.This is exactly the method I used in purchasing 005 without a single review.

The other thing about only relying on reviews is you'll usually find luke warm and negative reviews, in addition to the positives. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself and make a decision.

The only relevance of how China operates should relate to whether they have malpractices, etc. If the manufacturer operates a business without malpractices, then what happens between them and the Chinese government should not be something that the consumer should be pulled into or be aware of. If I missed the point, please elaborate.

Internal photos can be a good judge of quality of equipment, but not how it might sound. It might be similar to saying that the equipment performed excellent on test bench, like ASR, but then if it sounds sterile, then the numbers unfortunately don't mean anything.

I definitely look for user reviews when I try to search for a good product to buy. In fact the Rhumba, ProAcs and the Inakustiks are such products that do not have too many reviews, but user backing is strong. But when a handful of users take comments personally, defend the manufacturer for their issues, cuss others for not agreeing with them and then one user comes to rescue them all, that is a HUGE RED flag for me. So yes, user reviews are great, but everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

As for gifts to reviewers, it’s called an "accommodation" price, essentially the wholesale price--50 to 60 per cent of retail if it was new. So when a reviewer writes that he liked it so much he bought it, that’s an entirely different value assessment than his readers face. Moreover, accommodation units often go pretty quickly to the used market.

I had not heard, before Musician, of simply giving a new audio component to the reviewer. A bad review and he has a door stop for sale. A good review and there’s money to be made. Daniel1969 wrote in audiophilestyle.com, "I bought the sample Musician DAC from Sandu..." @debjit_g says he won’t go into the name of an American company that does that. I say, please do. Not surprised about cables. Their margins are tremendous so the give-away means very little. Plus there’s possible continuing publicity as the reviewer hooks up new components for review with those same cables.

While a well established print reviewer might have the liberty to give a bad review (or at least one that seems bad when you read between the lines) I don’t think that’s the case for internet reviewers. IMO manufacturers simply won’t take the chance of sending a product for review to someone who doesn’t churn out favorable reviews.

I agree that the quality of parts and layout can give a pretty good clue as to sound. Of course you have to know something about audio to evaluate the build of a component. A component cannot give more to the sound than it has good stuff within. I also made a decision on the Musetec, and other components, to a great extent on what was inside. I recall appreciating Goldensound’s review of the Holo May and the detail in which he revealed the details of its manufacture. It gave me the impresson he’s a serious guy. Most commercial reviewers, even the better ones, merely recite the component’s advertising copy to describe what’s inside.

I value the opinions of people who actually paid for their components, especially when there is a reasonably good number of them.

As for gifts to reviewers, it’s called an "accommodation" price, essentially the wholesale price--50 to 60 per cent of retail if it was new.

@melm leaving beside what it's called (its actually of no interest to me what they are called), there isn't much difference between 50-60% vs 100%. Its a favor a reviewer gets which a normal consumer doesn't. It doesn't really matter if its 50% or 100%. Its all fine but to say Musician is the company that gives when others doesn't is just not correct. That's my point and I have no skin in the game.