Well, I think if you look around the Stereophile site, you might find less sensible remarks about the Intelligent Chip. Jim Austin is in many ways a sensible guy, but he also tries to fit in with the group. I suspect Atkinson wants him on line for some balance, but not too much. Notice, for example, how Austin justifies not doing DBTs:
"Even in the realm of real devices, real components, and real effects, differences are often so subtle that you can hear them—really hear them—only if you have a very good ear and lots of listening experience. The differences are so subtle that double-blind testing—the standard method for distinguishing real effects from imaginary ones—has been rejected by much of the audiophile community as useless, except in the most obvious cases. This rejection is justifiable—even statisticians agree that DBT misses some subtle effects—but those of us who like to keep a tight grip on our wallets must mourn DBT's passing."
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/505awsi/index.html
Clark Johnsen felt lef out so he put in a letter which can be found in the link to the letters at the bottom of the article.
Atkinson did a piece justifying not using DBTs, too, in the July 2005 issue:
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/705awsi/
It's not on the site yet, but Jon Iverson has a piece in the August 2005 Stereophile justifying the abilities of the trained listener over using DBTs. Why the trained listener doesn't hear differences in a DBT that were heard sighted is not explained. This from a magazine that doesn't even bother to measure the performance of interconnects and speaker cables although they ostensibly think of them as "components." Don't ask me about it because I just read it on the newstand.
