Good points. Any rebuttals from the crowd (such as it is)?
Here are my personal first responses. Is there any indication that BMC has done a better job of implementing the 9018 than others have? Or that the HP amp is any good? I wouldn't mind having the PureDAC's built-in amp/pre-amp. I currently only have my pre-historic Adcom pre-amp and it's HP out, and I would need something to drive hard-wired TRS connected cans if I ever get any... plus I could possibly use it to attenuate the input to the Cyclops and thus get more into the amp's power range. Of course I could also get one of those fancy attenuators you guys have been building...
The Concero has the advantage of being cheap, which gives me an opportunity to analyze the price/performance tradeoff, and keep the total up-front cost of the testing down a bit -- remember, I have to pay for all of these units up front, and then make sure I get timely refunds to avoid having a bit of a cash crunch. Of course, the Emotiva is even cheaper, so I can use that as my bargain unit... and if I end up having to drop a unit (e.g., testing 9 instead of 10, or 8 instead of 9) to keep the costs reasonable, I'll do that as long as we have a good mix. On second thought, who am I kidding... I'm not dropping the size of the group based on up-front cost... in for an inch, in for a mile. I'll only drop the number of contenders if we can't come up with 10 that have decent return risk.