The funny thing is that the Headfonia O2 review wasn't all that warm. Actually it sparked quite a firestorm in the comments.

The idea that decent amps/DACs are essentially transparent (without getting into the merits of that idea) is hardly one that contradicts with designing the stuff - look at John Siau, the designer of the DAC1 and DAC2 (I know there aren't that many fans around here, but the mainstream hi-fi press gets quite excited over them). According to his posts on HydrogenAudio, transparency in the digital domain has been possible for a decade, and transparency in the analog domain for two - yet he keeps designing his gear, and it keeps selling! Admittedly, his opinions on how his gear sounds are markedly absent from the page trying to sell you it for some reason...

Again, you see that as the 'noble' primary motive but his tone and behavior is indicative of something else.  Set the internets ablaze, build a cult following and cash in.  Many have made the same point before just as you said and done it with a far less expansive and concerted effort with such a layout of time and resources.  Oh, he releases a commercial product and disappears at the same time because he's a genius and needs a break from it all.  Hah.  All that effort just because he's a nice and generous dood.  Haha.  Spouting about transparency while masking his identity and VPN through a network security firm in Zurich.  Hahaha!  
 
The apparently enormous logical holes in the JDS Labs post aren't really proof of anything - there was probably more to the EE's application than simply having heard of the O2, but that could quite easily be one of the "driving factor" sort of things you might mention at a job interview.

So a hypothetical 'probably more' to what JDS posted is what you consider better evidence.  Got it.  Yeah, when I apply for a job, I always mention how much better someone else is at it than I am.  Dude, what? 

I don't see anything more than coincidence linking the two, to be honest. More significantly, if NwAvGuy was planning this for personal gain all along, he's done a pretty shit job. Let's see how this EVILAVGUY has missed opportunities:

1) If he wanted to unleash the e-crazy at Schiit, why didn't he just measure their amplifier? The page for the Asgard makes the fatal mistake of saying it's happy with 16 ohm loads, which allow NwAvGuy to test it with said loads then excoriate it when it doesn't perform so well, regardless of whether anyone is actually driving said loads with it. It would just involve stretching the plausible logic of the AMB case a little *implausibly*, but hell, he has measurements.

Nope, Shike saved him the trouble of having to buy an amp and go through the trouble.  I don't get why you guys can't figure out that you don't expend effort and resources when others give it to you for free.  Actually I do, but nvm.  Operation slander Schiit was accomplished for free and done publicly in a large forum.

2) Why the restrictive licensing on the O2/weird 'transportable' design? As the documentation sets it down, the ODA (Objective Desktop Amp) can now never be realised - which seems strange from a profit perspective, as an ODA 'developed by JDS Labs using NwAvGuy's techniques in his absence' would be a license to print money. Surely NwAvGuy would have accounted for this?

He did.  He's releasing a C5 and likely a better ODA, perhaps w/ a digital pot after the C5 takes off.

What gets me, is those on the other side want a double blind test set up specifically by Nick Charles with a video camera rammed up my ass for public viewing on youtube but this mutherfucker gets to spout all this crap and manipulate you guys like a bunch of Scientologists without ever releasing his public personal information or any financials clearing him from any monetary gain from production of the O2 or ODAC.  I can't believe the amount of faith that extreme objectivists operate on.

Similarly, the O2 is pretty nonsensical as a commercial product - it significantly increases size and cost in order to accommodate batteries so a not-really-portable amp can be carried around by the very small numbers of people that actually want to do so. It makes perfect sense as a DIY point-prover, but a lot less as something you'd want to sell.

Really?  That's why people buy it?  That's why they extole it's virtures as audibly 'perfect' in oevery other thread?  That's why JDS is linking it to his products for marketing purposes?  Because it's a nonsensical product?  Makes perfect sense to me.  This whole thing always has from the beginning.  JDS even stated their sales increased 400% since the O2 because of this ground breaking, product of the year.  Do you really not see the obvious?

There are lots of smaller inconsistencies - why the incomplete measurements on the new JDS Labs product? For some reason, they haven't set up their low-impedance test loads yet, which I suppose you could attribute to pretending not to be NwAvGuy, but it would hardly look dubious if they had got some set up by now, and it would drastically increase the strength of their measurements. As it stands, even a NwAvGuy acolyte is likely to question them. NwAvGuy knows what numbers people expect (the numbers he's told them to expect), so why does he suddenly not produce  them?

Asked and answered by yourself.

My issue is that there isn't really anything in the way of a smoking gun here, or even a slightly fizzling gun. Everything on this thread can be explained quite easily by coincidence, so I'm inclined to go for the obvious solution, especially with my emails with NwAvGuy/his blog, which suggest that he's just a pissed-off engineer ripping apart anything which doesn't meet his (perceived - don't want to start an argument here, everyone knows where I stand on the matter ) standards, who finally decided to design some gear to fill the void. Take his stuff on the Mini3 - regardless of appearances, from my exchanges with him I think he genuinely tried to be constructive. In private his opinions about the amplifier were expressed rather more strongly!

The chronology of his design work, on both the DAC and O2 front, fits - he started work on the ODA, by all accounts, before he started on the ODAC, hoping to find a cheap DAC to endorse. And the incidents people highlight make better sense from this perspective - the sudden attack on Schiit on the basis of a low amount of evidence by his own standards makes no sense from a commercial perspective (as discussed above, he could have measured it in a plausible way that makes it look abominably awful + the Asgard's a single-ended minimal feedback job that's hardly about measurements to start with, so it's like shooting fish in a barrel), but it makes perfect sense from pissed off engineer on crusade perspective.

He was particularly disparaging towards Schiit after the incident, but even then it only usually appeared in a long list of popular amplifier manufacturers he deemed to be peddling snake oil.

All this above has already been asked and answered or is armchai r psychology.  My motive is money.  He obviously had the time to do all this so work wasn't exactly keeping him up burning the midnight oil.  All the coincidences are timely and make sense for the amount of resources a single individual has.  Your motive is that he was just angry and noble.  We can let others decide which is more feasible based on the events and their own personal experiences in the world.   

Anax: What are the key pieces of evidence that make this identity for NwAvGuy seem plausible for you?

Really?  Apart from everything already mentioned in the thread?  No wonder they say love is blind.

Hell, let's be objective about all this.  Give us a verifiable pic and name for the sake of 'perfect transparency'.