Have you changed your mind about a brand? Was it you, or them?
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. |
After living with a pair of Magneplanar Tympani's for a year, I was seduced by the new Fulton Model J, which offered deeper bass and the transparency of RTR ESL tweeter (6 of them per speaker). It took me only a coupla months to realize that what a big planar offers is more important to me than what speakers such as the J do (the midrange was reproduced by the 2-way Fulton Model 80, a real good box speaker for it's time). Back to planars! Then there was the time I replaced my Van Alstine-modified Dynaco PAS tube pre-amp with the hot new New York Audio Labs tube/mosfet hybrid Super It phono stage, which turned out to be not-so-hot. Back to pure tubes! Live and learn. One mistake I DIDN'T make was dumping all my LP's in the late-80's and replace them with CD's. Thank God! |
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. |
@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. |
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? |
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 |
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.... |
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'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. |
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. |
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. |
