Thanks for you kind reply Dave. I am sorry for the comment about "getting away with....".
I share many of your concerns. I came over here to this Board because I find that though Head-Fi may be the most active, there is an awful lot of mindless cheerleading and lemming-marching going on over there. Headphones are kind of peculiar in this sense; many headphone enthusiasts are not necessarily into high end audio. "High end audio" is of course a subjective term, but I think you likely know what I mean-many of these folks do not have components at the Bryston level of quality. They often will spend $1,000 or more on a set of cans and yet they are using iPods or laptops as their sources with $200 DACs and $200 headamps. But separate and aside from the denizens and character of various Boards, the universal truth is that you can't pick out equipment based on what you read on the 'net. You perhaps can make an educated guess based on wide acclaim and such, but that is about it. I am in the same boat as you are in a sense. No one has yet had a chance to hear the BHA-1 with various headphones since it has not yet been released. I am torn in that the Violectric V200 has wide acclaim (and again, I have not yet heard one of those) and I also would love to find a Leben CS300SX used. The Leben is an integrated amp, but it is one of the very few I would consider as an option to a dedicated head amp which is admittedly contradictory to something I posted at the outset of this thread.
And thank you, Fsonicsmith, for a reply that helps describe how you came to join this circle. I looked at a lot of forums, but this is the only one in which I regularly participate, because aside from not being a mindless cheering section, it does not commit these typical forum offenses:
1. Taking personal preferences as Holy Writ, and allowing, as a consequence, the pursuit of heretics as devil worshippers. Here we know that personal preferences are just that, and that no piece of gear, or technology, satisfies every taste.
2. Allowing personal attacks, characterizations, and foul language. Here civility in my experience so far is taken seriously by the members.
3. Suffering a moderator who misses the point of what forums are about, and who sees his or her role as being a nanny or forum Nazi. Here, self-discipline rules on the basis that although we might drift a bit from time to time, we understand that we are here to share ideas and experiences. If at times we color a little beyond the lines, we rarely jump on one another.
I like your comments about headphone enthusiasts. It was difficult at first for me to fathom folks spending a lot of money to make their iPods work better, until I remembered that some high end companies, like Wadia, have been making gear for iPod users. But in any case it is a very different kind of community, and in my view, a very different kind of market, which is one of the reasons I was pressing James yesterday, and I think some others saw why I was.
Obviously, I want the BHA-1 to perform a certain way for selfish reasons, but there is another thing. I feel kind of like a member of the Bryston family, having so much or its equipment in my home and being a customer for 33 years. I want it to continue to succeed, to hit a home run every time at bat. My fear - maybe just nervousness - is that in this case it may not have read the market right. But no doubt Bryston understands about these gambles far more than I do.
I am unfamiliar with the equipment that you mention, but now that you have, I'm going to look into the names.
Dave
