I don't know, the really high end audiophile guys are going nuts over the ART stuff. They're dropping high end tubes in those and swearing by them. Obviously they're not using them as mic pre's, though. I know the DIO Tube AD/DA is one of the units they're just going crazy over (and these are the same guys spending 2000.00 for their CD player, 5000.00 on the record player, etc). These guys are usually more anal than pro-audio folks when it comes to stuff like that. I think there have been some threads on audiogon, etc, but it's been a while since I read them. Anyway, there may be something to be said for these boxes, and it was the cheaper ART models that were getting the most crazy attention.