I used to be fairly active on a popular Headphone Forum, both before and after NwAvGuy appeared and disappeared on that forum.<p>Nobody with a real engineering background and strong belief in the scientific process could actively participate in that community and maintain a healthy state of mind.  Lots of people simply cannot let go of the possibility that maybe they cannot actually hear they things they claim they can, and there is a severe psychological bias to supporting people&#x27;s fancies, spending, and quests for &quot;perfection.&quot;<p>NwAvGuy is unique in that he tried to educate (and was very adamant about this) the community and designed a superior and relatively inexpensive DAC&#x2F;Amp to show people that many other people building eqiupment were full of crap.  And because of this I think somebody would have tried to harm him if he ever revealed his identity - I&#x27;m not exaggerating.<p>There were&#x2F;are a lot of people who tried to help on that forum by presenting general engineering principles and sensible methodologies (e.g. volume matching) for testing.  And eventually they all stopped participating because any push towards a scientific methodology was responded to with vitriol and hate.<p>So I&#x27;m not surprised he just vanished.  I used to get attacked for asking the most basic questions (e.g. did you try to volume match when comparing two amps).  I can&#x27;t imagine the hell he went through.  Why would you tolerate that hostility for a hobby?