I applaud your efforts towards advancing this site. I personally very much appreciate those who are willing to donate their prized possessions only to see them decimated by our devilishly clever host.
No worries. I feel I have a better DAC now and never would have had I not visited this site. I bought and listened to the Topping 90DSE before sending the DAVE to have a backup and I ended up liking it better (I picked the Topping solely based on its position at the top of Amir's rankings).
This was also a test for me too. If Amir's objective measurements didn't roughly line up with my subjective impressions of the products I've sent in, I would have thought less of the objective measurements and just moved on from this site. But they do line up (at least with DACs), and so that says something to me about their usefulness.
If anyone reading this thread is Chord fan, just take a deep breath. It seems to me Chord has put too much faith in their proprietary WTA, has sat on their laurels and has not paid enough attention to things like noise and some basic stuff. This stuff should be fixable with better engineering and the next Chord statement product can benefit from it. And if it's priced more sensibly, all the better.