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I didn't find one review saying that someone prefered O2 to other "high-end" amp. And if we're talking about measurements why there's so little interest on Head-Fi with the The Wire? It looks better than O2. The creator isn't a blowhard so no groupies for him?
MrSlim covered the main points regarding popularity of The Wire, which is of course an excellent higher-end (and very minimal, and tiny!) design that beats the O2 in performance. It's really hard to get PCBs now, and the O2 is cheaper. A kind of third issue is that builders are on their own regarding a volume control, gain, chassis, and so on, so it's not as convenient as a headphone amp without some more effort on the builder's part. The Wire itself is more like just a really good output stage.
The other deal is that it's not clear that The Wire's higher performance actually translates into something audibly better. Some people hear differences (when they are looking at the two different amps and know which it is they're listening to), but as has been discussed ad nauseum, this isn't particularly an indication that such a small difference is audible. Even if you don't believe in that, most of the V "cult" or whatever you want to call it, does think that that's true, hence the following.
I do agree there's a lot of ridiculous language flying around, and the accusations of "you must like amp X more because it clearly has more distortion" would probably start grating on anybody, especially since it's kind of a patronizing viewpoint to take (sometimes that may be a true statement though, but that's besides the point). There are also a lot of inflated estimates of the Beta22 cost!
Surely it would be wiser to spend several months comparing both amps before selling one ? Its not as if you can go out and buy another B22 at the drop of a hat. V spends a lot of keystrokes discussing things like expectation bias and placebo - given the hype around the 02, it would be foolish to think those same factors dont come into play with his own amp. I've already seen some outrageous claims for the performance of the ODAC and ODA from people who have heard neither - V has his own cult and they may be guilty of the same sins their Messiah spends each week railing against from on high.
I think there's an important distinction here to be made. Certainly there's expectation bias and placebo for listeners listening to any amp, including the O2. Even if it weren't very low distortion, many people would hear it that way because they probably expect it to, given the graphs and so on.
But I'm not sure exactly which you're talking about with respect to "outrageous claims" (hopefully they weren't regarding the
April 1st data), but it should be fair enough to describe the sound (lack of sound signature imparted) by devices that are assumed to follow the ideal response very closely. That's based on an interpretation of theory, previous studies, previous results, and so on. It is not at all influenced by placebo or expectation bias—nobody's even listening to anything yet.
As far as I can tell, the objections to theory seem to stem from "but that's not what I (or somebody else) heard," which is not very strong in terms of evidence unless we can be certain that the reported perception was not influenced by any undue factors such as expectation bias. I don't get the reference by many to what "true scientists" would think, if they themselves don't believe in the necessity of the most basic experimental controls. Usually that involves blind testing as a minimum requirement to start with, but if you can somehow eliminate all those factors in a different way, go ahead.
