The worst system I ever heard was at a friends house. Before I tell the story, I'm a firm believer that we all hear things differently. Because I don't like it doesn't mean it's a bad product or that I'm right and others with differing opinions are wrong. I think that if you had 3 people in front of a system there's a good chance that you will get some differing opinions among the group.
My friend had been going through equipment trying to find the best fit for him and spending a lot of money churning gear. He acquired a very highly reviewed system and invited me over to hear it. Well I spent 20 minutes squirming in his listening chair and he finally asked me what was wrong. I reluctantly explained to that for me the sound was so harsh and in your face that I couldn't listen to it. That's a hard thing to tell a friend. In any case he ended up selling the system a few weeks later and downsized quite a bit to a system that sounded much better to everyone who heard it including his wife. He has had the same system for the last 9 years. I won't name the products because I am sure to get flamed. My friend started a discussion on this when he sold the gear and the distributor had AGON take the thread down.
The lesson I learned is not to buy anything that you haven't heard in your own listening room, if possible.
|
Well... I lusted after the original Revel Ultima Salon’s for years - highly reviewed and rated as A+ . Heard them many times at dealers and shows and dismissed the dull sound as associated equipment or room. Finally against what my ears were telling me I purchased my Salon’s... three amps, four pre-amps, and two different rooms later I sold them.
I do have a friend that own’s a pair plus the new Salon2’s as well and likes them very much. So hold your flames, clearly my ears are broken hence the name tinear123
|
I dropped by a local audio boutique a few years ago and they were demonstrating the then-new Wilson Duette stand-mount speakers. I don't remember the electronics they were connected to, but they were decent, but the sound was bad - flat and no decent treble. Then I looked closer and saw that the source material was from a laptop computer. I think they were using the audio straight out of the laptop's sound card, though I can't be sure. To be fair, it may have belonged to a customer who brought it in for a demo, but it did the Wilsons no favors. |
How is GoldenEar not on this list like 5 times already? I have never heard something so well-reviewed that sounded so bland and with such poor imaging. We were a dealer for them temporarily, but couldn't sell them with a good conscience.
The other one is the Raidho D-1. We transported a set for a client from one house to another about 5 years ago and they sounded so bad I thought we may have damaged the tweeters. Seriously. We brought them back to the office and played them on 3 different systems for multiple employees and everyone agreed they just sounded bad. The B&W 805D absolutely crushed them above 80Hz. We even sneaked the 805D into the client's house while he was away and played them on the Zanden gear he had and the B&W was still way better. We told him we were concerned about the Raidhos which is why we brought them to our office to be checked out, but we couldn't find anything physically or electrically wrong with either one.
We never tried to sell the client on the B&W because we didn't want it to look like we were poo-pooing his gear. We just reconnected his D-1s and he said they sounded as they should. We were all shocked.
|
I auditioned for "Pirates of Penzance" once. Does that count? |
Schiit Audio Magni.
Granted, this is only a $99 headphone amp, but how in the world can they sell it? Hard to describe actually, but it produced some really strange digital to analog conversion. Maybe I had a flawed unit, but I returned it the very next day. |
Denon and Marantz - awful. I used to think Onkyo was a better budget A/V receiver, but after using Anthem - no contest for Anthem. I A/B'ed Dynaudio Special 40's with Martin Logan Motion 40's - Motion 40 smoked the Dynaudio - that surprised me. I was surprised that Classe class D amps (Sigmas) smoked both Moon and McIntosh. Parasound Halo P6 was pretty rank, the phono preamp was worse than $29 Behringer. Lost $500 to try that unit. The $1.09 a foot KarmaKable still some of the best sounding speaker cable to my ears (10 guage tin coated copper). I tried the PS Audio BHK250, sounded good, but underpowered - then I tried Jeff Rowland - ummm - no contest. |
|
I wouldn't say terrible, but I simply didn't enjoy the sound of some Paradigm 5Fs I listened to at the local shop a while back. It just sounded harsh. Source and amplification were McIntosh. I simply wasn't impressed for the price. The B&W I tried next were more to my liking. |
Auditioning for "pirates..." counts on any of my worst lists, even bicycles.
|
I demoed some bookshelf Martin Logans at Magnolia in Atlanta and thought they were terribly directional and lacked power all around. The entry B&W’s they had sounded much better though not my taste either.
Also heard a pair of DynAudio specials as previous reviewer and the seller at a specialty store here in ATL raved about but I thought the Monitor Audio Silver bookshelves sounded better for a fraction of the price playing the same track. Couldn’t believe it!
i gambled on a pair of Sonus Faber Principias without hearing prior acquired through here and have been an excellent value. |
I was auditioning $2k floor standing speakers recently. Two speakers that stood out as being surprisingly not good were the B&W 603 and the Goldenear Audio Triton Five. I've seen good reviews for both but how they sounded seemed nothing like what was said about them in reviews. Maybe their sound signatures don't fit my preference? I got a pair of Monitor Audio Silver 300s which do seem to be a great value at $2k. My notes on both:
Bowers & Wilkins 603: These speakers were a bit of mess. Their sound seems to be the result in trying to design a speaker that can play lower in the low end and higher in the high end without sorting out the fundamentals of how to play music first. Kind of boring to listen to since it fails to reproduce so much of the music captured in recordings and fails to play rhythms well.
Goldenear Triton 5: These were impressive sounding speakers with a lot of "presence" but I determined pretty quickly that they weren't for me. The breadth of the image they put out was wide but not well focused. The low end was full and powerful. Where they fell short for me was that their sound was a bit aggressive and pretty quickly fatiguing for me. Also the low end was a bit loose sounding and tended to overshadow the mid range and the highs.
|
Michael Green Revolution series speakers.
They were actively bad. |
Focal Aria 906
Though I know they work for many, these were definitely were the quickest "not for me!" reaction I ever had. Their sound was much too dry and flat for my taste.
|
Mogami speaker cables. Hands down, the worst piece of stereo equipment I have had the misfortune to audition.... |
But don’t the pros use Mogami cables? 😬 |
Mogami balanced/XLR interconnects are common in recording studios, not so their speaker cables. Ralph Karsten of Atma-Sphere, a man who knows good sound, recommends the ic's for use with his electronics. |
Been a few things. VACs integrated, the early version. We got it shipped in straight from the fairly positive Stereophile review. We assumed the best, told them it was broke and sent it back. They replaced a resistor, a couple of caps and a tube. Flat, no soundstage, not much for Dynamics. While the boss is on the phone with VAC, I hook up a little Italian EL34 SE integrated and turn it up a bit. Boss looks at me, the little amp, the phone, then sent it back. Sonic Frontier's SF1 preamp was a complete dud. Lifeless. The old Onkyo M504 amp that is making a comeback in the market. Pretty much any Carver SS amp has a Sonic signature that makes me cringe. Very bright, decent dynamics, but the bass is hollow. Crown has that upward tilt but big bass. Most of the newer behemoth amps anymore have become too bright and sterile. Speakers? Don't know where to begin.
In spite of the bad stuff, there have been many very thoughtful designers who actually took our critiques seriously. An importer we represented brought us two pairs of speakers with a glowing review in a Canadian magazine. They weren't bad, just not up to the hype. Recessed midrange and kind of muddy bass. Amazingly, a box showed up one day from the manufacturer with a very nice letter explaining the modifications driven by our review. The speakers were now quite good and did everything as we would expect. Cairn did the same with an integrated with odd voicing. Sent us the updated sample straight from the factory in France. Got involved with a couple of phono stage projects as well. One from square one, 3 in development. I miss the old industry.
|
I would have said the GoldenEar Triton 1. I listened to them at my local dealer and it sounded like something was broken. After that experience I was convinced GE was terrible. Two months later I went to Axpona and the Triton 1’s were teamed up with Primaluna. I thought the combo at the show sounded absolutely fantastic, so I’m always a little hesitant to say a particular component was terrible because odds are I’m wrong. Now, something was wrong that day I listened at the dealer but it wasn’t the GoldenEar like I concluded.
|
A lot of the time when a system sounds bad it is due to an amplifier/speaker mismatch.Unfortunately many modern speakers are very badly designed from ease of drive perspective which means they are likely to sound bad with a lot of amplifiers.I was recently reading a Hi Fi News with a roundup of the best speakers for the year and they were just about all difficult loads-typically dipping down to under 3 ohms in the bass where they should be more like 5-10 ohms .Focal Sopra was one but there was even worse loads than them [Wilson for example].These are amplifier hostile speakers!Speakers like this should not be recommended by anybody.
|
RE; Mismatched components. Yes, if an amp is such a cheap design that the power supply will not driver certain speakers, thent it is mismatched to all but efficient speakers. I'll give an example of the difference power supplies: The very nice, early Bryston 4B is 200 watts per channel. The contemporary Audire Forte is 125 wpc, but has a two ohm rating of 400 wpc full range. The Bryston uses 4 output transistors per channel, and is not rated for 2 ohms. if I remember correctly (I have a 3B.). The Audire, 6 outputs per channel. (Later Audire's use many more), but I think the much bigger difference is in the power supplies. Each channel has: Audire 500 watt tranformer and 4 x 26,000 mf's of filter capacitance; Bryston, 375 and 2 x 4000. My old Polaris Sumo got great reviews. It had practically no bass on my B&W 803's, and was even weak on my 38 year old B&W's. It's new owner loves it and says it sounds the same as the one he already owns. James Bongiorno (of Ampzilla fame), who designed some Polaris pieces, wanted no credit for the Sumo. Nice name thought. Reverse psychology, I guess. Yes, it has a small power supply. Even my old Phase Linear 400 lost bass at high volumes; Power supply, OK for 8 ohm speakers, but weaker than my less powerful Audire's in the bass. WEIGHT MATTERS!
|
You listen to a system, including the room and its acoustics, not individual components.
It’s always possible a particular unit is defective and that should be ruled out first, but when things sound really bad most often it is because the components in the system are not good matches. SAme components in a different combo elsewhere could be the bees knees.
The most disappointing system I ever heard was a 6 digit setup at Sound By Singer in NYC a few years back. The speakers were large Peak Consult and the amp Luxman. Other systems in there sounded very good. I suspect something was defective in that setup but if so the sales guy did not seem to notice. |
