Brands I would avoid today because of less than stellar ownership experiences include Adcom, Carver amplifiers, though I loved the carver sound and power, their reliability was worse than adcom. Adcom was not that great in spite of the hype about their build quality, especially the preamps. To be fair to the Carver equipment it was all bought second hand and I had several pieces that performed flawlessly for years and a notable few that didnt. Perhaps due to previous owner abuse or old age. My hafler and dynaco gear from back in the day was flawless and long lived. Happily would go there again if they were available.
I am somewhat sold on the class H amplifier design and am therefore enjoying a couple of new emotiva products. I like the way their amplifiers sound; that is, neutral and clean with no sonic signature of their own. And I appreciate they are more efficient than class ab
I have had a lot of Yamaha gear that was largely reliable and served well for a lot of years. I don’t have recent experience with their current products so cannot say if their stuff is still built well today.
Crown amps are really reliable and my experience with them was good as subwoofer amps. A bit noisy in full range mode but as a sub amp, they performed brilliantly and with no complaint EVER. Yes I would buy them again for that specific purpose.
I had an old Marantz receiver (20 wpc) back in the day and it was pretty reliable but it got to where the channel balance was way off and and didn’t really sound good anymore...I couldn’t justify the expense of repairing it and got rid of it. I might dip my toe in the Marantz pool again but they have gotten to be stupid expensive. I had an Onkyo 50 wpc amp that lasted a good 30 years before it began to have problems. I have an old Kenwood dolby pro-logic receiver I am still happily using in my bedroom system that works as well today as the day I got it. Truly a keeper. No issues at all. not sure what will replace it when it dies. If Kenwood was still making quality gear in the US I’d consider buying more of it. I’d love to have my old SL-D1 Technics turntable back in good condition but our recent fire killed it. That was a really good table for its day and is still better than many fairly expensive tables available today.
My dearly departed AR turntable from years ago was a good piece for its day and in good condition I would happily own one again.
The adcom preamp I had GTP-600 was good for quite a few years but the switches and pots died way too early for me to feel like I would go there again. Their basic amps were good solid pieces I owned several of them that were not problematic other than their relatively high price.
I have some 10-20 year old Yamaha gear that is still in pretty good shape and will use that equipment till it dies.
I have owned two vizio tvs, one was good and one was a PITA. so probably no more Vizios for me. I had a Panasonic Plasma set I loved but lost that in the fire. I’d buy another Panasonic TV if it had the features I wanted. Currently have a Samsung tv that I hate and a toshiba tv that I hate....never again for either of those brands. I currently have two LG products, one is a straight computer monitor and I like it. Works well. The other is a TV/monitor and I do NOT like their privacy agreement which you must accept to use their product...So no more LG for me...regardless of how good the actual product is. I have owned Sony products that performed well for a long time and would own more Sony, but will be very choosy about what I buy. Their ES line is generally pretty good I think, having owned several ES components, cd player, cassette deck, and a sony distributed audio system for the whole house. The lower end stuff is junk IMHO. Other than true computer hardware and ham radio gear that covers most of what I have owned except for speakers. Most of what I had speaker wise I auditioned and bought cause I liked the sound. But now days that is harder to do. Especially higher end speakers like Legacy Audio and those in that price category are impossible to audition locally. Everything I want to listen to is a major road trip away from me. So I either settle for junk from best buy or make a road trip. Its gonna be a long strange trip :)
