Have you changed your mind about a brand? Was it you, or them?

LG refrigerators. Compressor breaks after 18 months. Be warned.

Can't beat a Belgian Quad.

Ti tweeters gave me tinnitus. 

Agree on the beer.  My biggest disappointment was with the Hyperion Sound, the maker of my wonderful HPS-938 speakers. They had speaker of the year for 8 years in the row and speaker of the decade awards from Absolute Sound, not to mention they had orders for 6 months, after 2004 California show.  After that they never advertised, had no dealership base and ended up in bankruptcy.  Now I have speakers with exotic drivers and no support.

Well, that's not a good example of a brand you changed your mind about.  That's just a brand that didn't succeed.

Sorry I wasn't clear, I was actually trying to focus on audio related brands. :)

My first component system was Fisher, which back in the ’60s I thought was a really top brand.

I’ve been disappointed with Classe for not supporting legacy products when a tuner and an amp were unrepairable.

And I am still sore at Graham Engineering for never sending me an owner’s manual for the Phantom arm, tho I do like the arm.

I'm more a dark beer guy than a lager drinker, but Ma'a, a brewer based in my new home town of Hilo, brews an excellent enough lager to give my lager drinking a new lease on life.  It's good enough to stand comparison to the lagers I drank in Bavaria...though perhaps not as good as the lagers I drank in the Czech Republic.

Ok, being of German descent Lager beer is where its at for myself.
Windhook Lager is just jolly fine too - and of course all brewed to "German Reinheitsgebot" i.e. no 🌽 Mais, rice 🍚 , or any other unspeakable stuff added to replace barley malts. 
Amen. 

As for Audio... B&W is one brand I lost my 'emotional' connection to.
Gone from affordable floorstanders to way-out pricing and still no more tickling my sound bone.
The first Wilson Watt/Puppy I listened to during a 1996 audition in Germany.
I didn't 'connect' then - too hyped up a reproduction - a second higher version number of same construction, at my then home in Pretoria SA... terrible sounding bass performance, bad on my ears, and plain wrong to me. 
Though I till beleave Wilson creates some amazing newer items, though completely unaffordable for my liking AND my purse. 
So... disenchanting as well, overall. Maybe I was never enchanted in real-life, just by circumstances? But yeah, surely tickled by them fantastic reviews.
M. 🇿🇦 

I bought my first new headphone, after 25 years with Beyerdynamic Dt 990 indestructible headphone that my wife break with the aspirator, 8 years ago, Hifiman He 400 replace them; but they break themselves in 2 parts suddenly after 4 years of using them with care for no reason excess defective design....Paid a 300 hundred bucks at this time for a defective hyper hyped product....It gives me a first lesson.... Some other comes after....For sure i will never buy Hifiman products in the future.... Nor any too hyped new one..... :)

My wife remember that accident because that motivate my obsessive journey in audio audiophile experience for the good 7 years ago....I mange to do that without much money but with success....

My speakers and audio system is so good ( vintage speakers Mission Cyrus and amplifier Sansui AU 7700)now that i dont use any of my 7 headphones even the Stax models.... Good Speakers rightfully embed trash them all on all counts....

My best....

A remark: Contrary to the Hifiman experience, the Mission experience and the Sansui experience were so good i bought another model for each one of these brand with complete satisfaction....

I used to have a lot of respect for lower end B&W speakers; bought my dad some in the 1990s and they sounded nice with NAD gear.

On my recent outings to audition bookshelves, all the B&W speakers were over-bright to the point of aggressive harshness. I understand this was a choice on their part, perhaps?f

Totally agree on B&W, which is what I was going to post about.

Owned DM1800’s for a long, long time and thoroughly enjoyed them. Back then, I would have ranked them high in the pantheon of great British speaker makers.

More recently, auditioning much newer models, I thought them either mediocre or unlistenable.

I wonder if the reverse direction is less common: anyone dislike a brand and then later come around to them?

@twoleftears And I held them in *really* high esteem, so they have really fallen.

I like your question about the reverse. And one has to be careful with these questions, since there can be a gap between the lower line of a brand and their upper levels of product. So, can be an apples to oranges comparison mistake.

I will add one comment, namely, that I really thought Adcom was very mediocre, but I realized that of my two units -- a tuner/preamp and the amp -- that once I paired a really good tube preamp with the adcom power amp (535L), it sounded pretty darn good. In other words, the amp is still only mid-fi, but it has much greater potential paired with a good preamp than I previously thought.

Yeah, I wrote a whole blog about the modern B&W treble response and Stereophile pushing it.  Drives the fans bonkers.


https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2016/05/stereophile-reviews-data-doesnt-lie.html


Glad to know others have also been scratching their head in wondering.

Yes.
Both.

I had forgotten: having had my mind blown when I heard the Decca Blue cartridge on Bill Johnson's tonearm (a prototype that never went into production) in '73, I never-the-less went with the flow and replaced it with a Supex moving coil and the Levinson head amp in '74. Again, learned to trust my own taste, and went back to the Decca.

I had B&W 804 Nautilus for about 6 years they were good for HT but I usually ended up listening to music with my AKG 701s. 

@erik_squires Thanks for the link. I always enjoy your blog posts and have learned a lot.

I think about the B&W move akin to the salt-fat-sugar approach to food. Get their attention and hook them with primal urges. (Only at home to they get fatigued and wonder what's wrong.)

I have been in audio over 40 years, owned a Audio store and been sucked into pushing the name brands for years .
I just sold a well known Krell Vanguard, and bought a Yamaha 2100 integrated amp, many told me it’s not Audiophile brand .
I will tell you what it’s loaded with all quality parts from Japan 80% Nichicon gold tune ,capacitors and 4 Big -22,000 power caps,
fully balanced,with a floating ground system,and a dual mono design. and nice retro looking meters . It has very good resolution
using Dual Sanken 20 amp Mosfets per channel. One down side it was a bitch to breakin over 200 hours to settle in the new 2200 is a bit better still at $4k ,I thought it was better then my friends $6k McIntosh ,or Bryson ,that being said I like the more upfront defined presentation ,some like it more laid back .that being said it has a kt88 type sonic warmer signature with better control. That’s why it is good to read reviews,and owner opinions but let your experience
guide You not others.

the Czech Republic....is more than beer,..maybe. I can strongly recommend the meats below the brewery in Pilson.

one brand that was a yawner for me was Quad electonics...i get the unique genius of Peter Walker....just now...

@erik_squires Yeah, I know. We had a bad LG weekend. All food ruined.

Audio. Mission Cyrus amps. Horrible.

I think about the B&W move akin to the salt-fat-sugar approach to food. Get their attention and hook them with primal urges. (Only at home to they get fatigued and wonder what's wrong.)

And I really don't mind any company coloring the sound of their products, but like you say, it sells better than it lasts, and don't you dare try to sell me this is a neutral sounding speaker.

Czech beer is fabulous. Pilsner Urquell has a better flavor over there. Krusovice and Bernard are great as well. Agree with B&W gear. Back in the day I thought it was incredible stuff. Today, there is such a harshness to their highs, that I would go elsewhere. I really like my new Dyn Contour 60i. Smoothe as silk. 

I had ridiculously high expectations for the Levinson 333 amplifier and Wilson Watt3-Puppy2 after years of lusting and listening at dealers... flat lifeless disappointment.  I suffered through 9 months of system changes before selling both.

On the positive side, I was very skeptical about the PS audio Directstream DAC and it's one of two DACs I have used for years.  

Focal. I only ever heard great things about them and I dreamed of owning a pair as my first hifi speakers. After 12 months of system changes and moving up the focal line I discovered that their tweeters are not to my tastes. 

Not a fan of NAD. Had an integrated and found it to be quite blah. On the other hand, I have found that Tekton speakers are a good as other have said. Absolutely love them.

I went from all Meridian (top of range 8000 speakers, 861 processor, 800 dvd) to Bryston/B&W. The Meridian set up was (and is)  unacceptably cumbersome and prone to things going wrong.

I had a one to one relationship with the directors before they sold out to a lifestyle Dunhill crew (the previous owners even  came to my home to install the set up) but after sale of the business Meridian showed no interest in customer support.

I have had the B&W d2 and now have 800d3 . If you are agreeing with someone who said the measurements are similar, then that has no meaning of any significance.

The d3 is a totally different speaker to the d2 (much better with the "top" issue now sorted) and sounds far better. I have compared them to £150k Wilsons, and independently, I and my friendly dealer, both agree we prefer the d3s. They punch way way beyond their price range.
If you can't tell the difference between a d2 and d3, which your quoted article states then that is a shame, for you, as the difference is significant.

Personally I'm over Integra, Onkyo and Denon. All 3 mid to high end receivers I've owned from these brands have failed in one way or another, and all 3 in a short time frame, but right after warranties expired. I'm having good luck with the Lexicon MC-10 and my Bryston 8B-ST's are rock solid. My old Klipsch Epic CF-4's have sounded great for 20 years but the Klipsch Reference Premier 280's and some other copper gear (I forget the models) to me were inferior so I sold them pretty quick. Now that I understand only their Heritage and Cinema/Pro gear is still made in Hope, AR and the rest is made overseas,  makes sense why the new copper gear has been so underwhelming to me...obviously this is just my personal opinion  but has been my experience. 

I had an Onkyo HT processor for a week, same for Emotiva. Same super thin sound.  Don't ask me why, but talk about a serious let down.

New Colts is not like 20-30 years ago... big disappointment in assembling quality and materials. Levies jeans got pure too.. audio equipment seems to be fine. 

DW drums and DW hardware. Waaay worth it. Gibson Les Paul. Way to spotty QA for a lot of money. Rega turntables. After loads of research, and a fair bit of shopping to buy a Planar 3 (a lot of money for me) very disappointed by poorly designed deck with ground hum.

@tatyana69 Agree with you about the difference between B&W d2 and d3. I’ve had both.
My first time out I thought my Marantz 8001 amp was the bee’s knees. But then my McIntosh 6700 integrated made short work of the Marantz. Now, my Pass Labs has taken things to the next level and put the 6700 to rest. Given the pattern, there always seems to be great joy followed by a discovery of what’s next, which is what I didn’t know I was missing with my previous setup. It’s been said on here that more money doesn’t mean better. But it’s kind of gone that way.
If there’s ever an audio convention again, I suppose I’ll discover that my B&W 803 d3s are lacking in some dimension I haven’t yet experienced and I will jilt the speakers I currently love. I still have my Marantz and listen to it very occasionally to remember how much more I have now. But the Marantz had its time and I loved it. So did my old McIntosh. While I might cringe now at what I used to love, each was a blast if only for a while.

I had a deep love affair with Naim, as many British hifi-enthusiasts do.
Naim have a very cleverly marketed upgrade path where power supplies and separate components can be upgraded to the next up the chain. It is an addictive process. However I lost that love for Naim and realised the hype that was the ’upgrade path’ when I discovered that a 2 box Class A Vitus set-up cost much less than a top-of-the-range 6 box Naim System and sounded significantly better.

I disagree with the dismissal of B&W in some of these posts. The lower end of their range may be bright sounding, but the 800 series, when integrated into powerful quality amplification, sound absolutely sublime with absolutely no 'edginess'.  The top of that range, the 800 D3, is one of the best-priced high-end speakers in the market, competing with Wilsons and their ilk at far higher prices.  

I would have to say YBA  . wasn't too happy with the selling of the company to a chinese firm and switching all the lower end equipment to china ( i believe Shanling bought the business). , but given the way of business these days it was probably required in order to keep the brand viable.  Now the only really French hand built YBA gear is their top of the line Signature line, which unfortunelty is way out of my price range.

I met John Bowers when B&W hosted me in Worthing for a visit in the 70's. A wonderful man and engineer who really changed the face of hifi--and not just in England. Since his death things have spun wildly. Do a little research and you will find out that B&W has really changed since being sold, divided and whatever to wring maximum profits from a still-respectable brand.+1 on the B&W tweeters. I was ready to buy a pair until I heard them and then when I heard the Dynaudio lineup, I was converted. My brother-in-law sold B&W's and went to Maggies.EVOLUTION!

I thought that metal tweeters was the way to go.  I bought Mirage M-3Si quite a number of years ago.  At first, the big open sound was great.  But after some time it began to bother me; way too bright.  Raising children and paying for higher education prohibited me to replace them.  But now that is behind me and I have been building an entirely new audio system.  I auditioned BE tweeters in a few brands last year and, though better than the titanium metal tweeters in my Mirage speakers, they still sounded like a metal tweeter.  I had my eyes & ears on Dynaudio for some years.  I bought their car audio speakers for two of my car audio systems over the past 10 years.  So, I recently bought the Dynaudio Contour 60i set of speakers.  They are "smooth as silk" as stated above by jrbirdman333.  I only have about 12 hours of run-in time on them and already they sound amazing.  I can imagine the midrange and bass will only get better over the next 60 or 70 hours of run-in time.  But the real story hear is the tweeters.  Metal tweeters were once what I thought was great.  But actually a soft silk dome tweeter much more satisfies my musical tastes.  And also, far more satisfying to my ears.  From titanium to soft dome, from bright to smooth; made everything wonderful for me.

Marantz. Two failed disc players, one after another. The DV9500 and the SA8260. Very disappointing. I’ll never buy a disc player from them again. And Audio Research. I bought an integrated (used, right here on Audiogon) that had a bad power supply. AR would not support the repair of the product. Never again.

Not that it affects their sound quality, but I think B&W just got sold, again.

BOTH DUDE!!!!

I used to be a big B&W fan, had one stand mount after another, just before ordering a pair of their best stand mounts, attended an event at my then local audio dealer, where Totem was sponsoring the open bar, so I ventured into their room and was blown away by the Fire monitors.  I returned to the dealer for some quality time with both speakers, the Totems won "hands down".

I also used to be an NAD fan, had several of their amps, receivers, CD players and their Masters series components, but had more repairs on them than I could stand...now I know I'm going to get killed for this, but I switched to McIntosh.

Well, I wouldn't wish to do a direct McIntosh to NAD comparison, but the latest NAD mini integrateds are really nice and affordable.  Great solutions for desktop / living room systems.

Bryston.  They make great amps, and I love their DAC.  Their streamer is however poorly conceived, and I was dumb enough to buy their optical player, which basically can only be used as a CD transport .  They should stick to amps and quit trying to have a full lineup

My most expensive mistake was Apogee Divas. They turned out to be very fragile and when I heard the company was going under I bailed. Fortunately they still had mythological status so I did not do too poorly. 
Back to my trust old Acoustat 2+2's. I came to the realization of just how special they are and use them to this day. In term of active companies that I would not do business with if they gave me the stuff? That would be Dan D'Agostino. I had my run in with him when he still ran Krell. I had KMA 100's and KR 2 preamp. One of the pots in the preamp started to fail. They were a special order part which Dan ran out of and would not order more. His response was to pick up a Pot at Radio Shack and "just mount it on top." The preamp was so thin regular pots would not fit. The shame is that the amps were truly special. As far as I am concerned Dan can go shovel sh-t in a corner. 

I loved my Marantz Reference PM15S2b integrated when I first got it. When I got the Kinki Studio EX-M1, I liked that even more.

With some fiddling of filter settings on the Marantz SA15S2b SACD player, installing the Niagara 1200 power conditioner, using Isoacoustic Oreas under my gear, and turning off the darn LEDs on the Marantz gear, I now have almost the same see-thru of the Kinki with more body, warmth, and nuance from the Marantz, giving me a new appreciation for the Marantz, over that of the Kinki. 

A big plus is now it's all matching in the looks department and I'm now back to a wider range with the volume since it doesn't come on full song so darn early with the settings.

All the best,
Nonoise

I've tried 4 dedicated streamers that cost up to $2100,  using them as roon endpoints and I've yet to find one that sounds any better than using a raspberry pi4.  I guess that's a type I'm about to give up on. 

I changed my mind about Tekton as a brand. I thought it was just another small company producing decent speakers and that was about it.

After being exposed to a few threads and somewhat religious approach that Tekton disciples seem to have, along with reading about their speakers, something changed. Company owner's responses in one of the threads hardly helped.

I am not talking about speaker performance (I have had same and very limited opinion), but this thread is about "brand image" I think.

Klipsch.
RP 600m - first pair of Klipsch I ever had (just got them this week).
Shied away from Klipsch because I was hesitant horn speakers were too bright.
Well, these aren’t. Early in the break in stage but showing mucho promesa. 

McIntosh. Dreamed about owning a Mc amp/pre and finally after 20+ years got it. Had it 5 years and tried three different speakers and never connected to it, never really enjoyed the sound. Loved the meters.....

bdp24 reminds me of what was definitely my biggest mind changer with his mention of the NYAL “SuperIt”; probably the most overrated piece of audio gear that I have ever experienced first hand. However, one experience should not a brand “mind changer” make.

I bought the SuperIt after having lived with my first “serious” amplifier (and biggest audio investment until then), the NYAL Moscode 600 as well as two of their preamps back in the early days of my audio journey. Tons of power, but no matter the speaker the music didn’t move the way it should. Not knowing any better I could not believe that the problem might be the “mighty” Moscode. Got rid of the SuperIt and lived with the Moscode for another couple of years.

I then bought a pair of the notoriously power hungry Stax F-81 electrostatics after hearing them make glorious sound driven by their own amps and thinking that the Moscode would have no trouble given its power. Sounded awful; not only no boogie, but tonally weird. Then....an epiphany and one of the biggest audio lessons learned. My local TV repair shop had a lowly Dynaco ST-70 sitting in the back unclaimed and I bought it for $85. I tried it with the Stax thinking “what the hell” and to my amazement......music! No volume to speak of, but beautiful, transparent sound that moved (!) even at low volume. I was amazed. Not being able to afford a proper amp for the Stax at the time I sold them and the Moscode. (Bought another pair of Stax years later and still own them.)

In fairness to NYAL, if I ever find a pair of their Futterman OTL’s that won’t blow up,  I just might be tempted.

I went from three sets of B&W speakers to Tekton. Folks that know me were shocked but to a man, after listening sessions, totally agreed.After years of digital solid state, I tested several higher-end amp configurations. Including very expensive solid state and valve. What ultimately won was a Class D Lyngdorf. Did not see that coming but it did. That said, Nelson Pass amp was a very close second.
Loved analog, then digital, then analog again, but am back to digital as my preferred source. But still love my Feickert table source very much. Again, a close second in my heart and still often used.