I don't think bake-offs are particularly good for forming opinions though, no better than a show at any rate. That made me laugh. The thread on AoS is becoming another one of those "I wasn't at the bake-off but I'm going to express an opinion on it anyway" threads. When it comes to people...

I've now read all the comments here and elsewhere. I think in general very fair and looks like the winner is the NVA 2 in spite of Bigman pushing the Firebottle products up in his pecking order. Both Nick and Dave (MCRU) seem very impressed and in view of their experience that counts a lot. Always ...

... Nick and Lindsayt are experienced and expert both technically and subjectively. I'd just like to add a bit of clarification to this. When it comes to electronics I'm pretty much hopeless. My educational and early career background is in mechanical and production engineering. I am not a technica...

I own an EMT 930 and an EMT 950. Oh, and the built in phono stage on the Akai AA-8080.

Now that you have that information, am I, in your opinion an inpartial listener or not?

I find the psycholgy around hi-fi, inparticular bake-offs more interesting than the equipment itself. Post bake-off chat, is, in my opinion, similar to a few mates watching a football match and then going down the pub and chatting about it afterwards. They may or may not agree about the match. They ...

No, what I am saying is the Phono 2 was the best bang for buck IMO and I stated that in my original summary. That hasn't changed. I felt the KIN had an air and space that the Phono2 didn't have but I felt the best stage of the day other than MFA was the JFET. Did any of you actually read what I sai...

...And it's not worth arguing about as you say, the masses when asked usually provide the right opinion so my summary alone is only part of the story. You, the doc, Nick and MCRU all chose the NVA over the FB stuff and that's out there now. And it was done in a neutral venue, with impartial listene...

Have I been moderated again! Sweet Christmas! That joke was funny. C'mon guys. I respect the verdict and to be fair, I can see where they are coming from. The Phono 2 was very good. As I said, if I was looking that's what I'd buy. So how do you square that away with you saying that you prefered the...

I agree with Nick and MCRU's summaries on Audio Talk.

The £780 NVA 2 with the 2 x power supplies was the sweet spot for price / performance.

I personally prefered the 4 x power supplies, but can fully understand Nick's preference for the 2 x.

I prefered the Furutech to the Akai (hey it's my receiver so I can diss it all I like). I was pleasantly surprised by the Furutech. Dinky little box with an ADC that sounded OK.

The JFET was good but never did the magical disappearing act - to my ears.