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Is there any bad sounding high-end gear--?

I was reading the thread here today about biased reviewers-
it got me thinking, out of the stuff which is reviewed in the publications which serve the high-end arena, is there really any bad sounding gear?----I am talking about from what I call the golden era of High-end, 1990---2000, stuff from the major players like ARC, CJ, Krell, MLevinson, Jadis---etc-----I use this time frame as this was the pre-Chinese era when most gear was from the US, we also saw stuff from Italy, France and Swiss made stuff.

When I have purchased something and not liked it, I always struck it up to a system mismatch----

If anyone can provide what they bought and really thought it was terrible, I'd be interested to know what it was.
justlisten

Showing 1 response by meiwan

meiwan
399 posts
 
I doubt anyone can argue any high end stuff is 'bad sounding'. As you say, system matching is really important.

I will venture to argue that there is a lot of high end stuff that is not particularly good value for money (ie., sound vs. cost). Part can be attributed to packaging (really cool design) that plays little or no part in sound quality and part profit margins which don't diminish but increase with higher end stuff. I've heard different people say Krell, Wilson, Linn, Naim and McIntosh they felt sounded like crap - but again cost/value, system matching. Personally I don't get Naim or Linn at all, having listened extensively to both.
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