Bias: An inclination of temperament or outlook. A personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment.

I don't believe that such a thing as an unbiased review actually exists. For that matter, I don't believe that an unbiased review is even the most useful kind of review.

Really, in reading a review, I suppose I'm actually trying to discern how my bias compares with the reviewer's bias. If comparable, then I probably tend to assign more weight to the reviewer's comments. If contrasting, then I may tend to assign less weight to the reviewer's comments. And in some cases, the reviewer's bias may actually help me to appreciate an aspect of this hobby that I had previously overlooked.

Case in point: Bossobass is clearly biased against assigning much value to the analog two-channel performance of a pre/pro. In his view, the newer, high-resolution multi-channel formats are the only way to go. On the other hand, I DO care about this aspect of a pre/pro's performance because I've heard regular CDs sound really amazing in various incarnations of my setup. As a result, I'd probably pay more attention to opinions from SH and KCB when it comes to the 950's two-channel chops. Interestingly, SH and others do use a separate, high-quality analog pre in conjunction with the 950 for CD listening.

Getting back to Ricky and JohnTompkins, I think their inclinations are fairly obvious. In general, they acknowledge that the 950 is a good performer at its price point, but they feel that it's a big stretch to say that the 950 competes with (let alone outperforms) the other more-costly units. In general, I regard this as a pretty reasonable opinion.

However, what really, really bugs me is to see them assert, over and over again, that the majority of people on this forum don't believe that there are better sounding pre-pros available. Can we please get past this? I've looked over a good bit of this forum, and I see lots of 950 owners who've owned and tried lots of other gear. In general, the thing that hooked them with the 950 was its VALUE. In other words, the things the 950 doesn't do are relatively minor compared to all the great things that it does do for the money. Even the print reviews on the 950 seem to agree on this point, so it's just beyond me why this debate rages on.

Lastly, the review of the 950 in The Perfect Vision did note that the 950 sounded better when mated to the 770. I'm curious to know if others have had similar experiences and if anyone knows why a 770 would sound better with the 950 than a high-dollar BAT multi-channel amp.