Your post just suggests an extreme preference for a type of sound and a strong bias against high performance very expensive gear, except perhaps a few you love. Surely people who share your defined and restricted preference will appreciate your reviews.
And no, your words do not upset this particular and I think most DCS owners. My reference is a Studer A80 playing copies of master tapes and life, and I know how good some top digital equipment - not just DCS - can sound with good recordings if properly matched and tuned, something that I agree with you, does not happen every time in shows.
Audiophile live is filled with diversity - IMHO we should enjoy it and pick what we prefer. But IMHO there is nothing to be won calling ugly and nasty names to equipment other people like.
Yes, I have an extreme preference for gear and systems that sound natural and create a "live" feeling when listening to them (recording permitting of course). in pursuit of that bias i have naturally been led in certain directions in preference to others. I am allergic to any kind of synthetic sounding artifacts and it doesn't matter how high "resolution" or "transparent" or "fast' etc. it sounds because if it has those artifacts it is wrong to me. This unfortunately eliminates most hifi in my book, regardless of price or shilling that has been done on it's behalf.
Please define "high performance very expensive gear"...to me this sounds like snobspeak for just "very expensive" gear has to be better...it doesn't have to be better. If there is a correlation between price and performance it is quite loose, particularly once you get over a few thousand dollars for a given piece of gear (except maybe speakers). So, do I think the pricing of many of the so-called "reference" DACs is silly and mainly a grab for recognition because of the high price and that it must equal higher performance?? In many, if not most cases it is a resounding yes!
I have heard so many very high priced disappointments that I have lost count.
That being said, I saved my highest praise in 2016 for the room at Munich that probably also cost the most, that being the Living Voice Kondo system. A lot of the resolution uber alles freaks here say it sounds too smooth or colored but it is one of the few systems with nearly no synthetic artifacts to give the game away. It might not be perfect (what is?) but it at least delivers a realistic, organic tonally in the right ballpark sound. More than I can say from most of the rest. The only time I heard a Wilson system sound really good at a show was last year with the Alexia and Nagra and I was super surprised because it had SS amps. It even made my top 5 room report as the only system with SS amps to do so. I haven't heard a Lamm/Wilson setup but would love too as it has real potential, IMO.
I have also been blown away by a couple of Wavac rooms in the past...particularly a room with the HE805 amp (and the top Wavac preamp) in 2006 at the London Heathrow show. Can't remember the speaker name but I hadn't heard them before and had ceramic drivers, which normally I don't like. Not this time...amazing tone and timbre with walkaround imaging and soundstaging...terribly expensive system but it delivered magic.
So, your assumption is based on a poor understanding of my priorities it seems. Also, you don't seem to realize that a lot of what is "high priced high performance" is really just luxury priced with mediocre performance.
I never called anybody's gear a nasty name. I stated my opinion on the sound of something and if that is now name calling, I guess we can just shut down this site.