What Gear Has Disappointed You?


While it's clearly not an absolute fact, we tend to have an expectation that a more expensive product should be better.  Within a given brand it really should be a fact, but because there's a wide range of factors in play when it comes to pricing it's not necessarily true when comparing different brands.  I think that it's fair to say that when we purchase a more expensive product we generally have an expectation that it'll perform better.  In the cases where our experience confirms this belief it can be the result of the product actually being better and/or some expectation bias. In a sense, it doesn't really matter which it is.

With this in mind, have you ever purchased a product expecting it to be superior only find that it was clearly inferior in your experience?

 

mceljo

Nuprime CDT-8 Pro transport...major problems with drawer and controls...Nuprime and Audio Advisor totally unresponsive, even though unit was under warranty..the unit did sound great when working though...

Back about 10 years ago I decided to get serious about power delivery and purchase a more expensive than had power conditioner.

I bought a Running Springs Audio Dmitri power conditioner (around 5k new)

I was shocked how closed-in and warm it made everything. Maybe I already had to much warmth at the time and it  just wasn’t a good fit. But I surely didn’t expect a power conditioner to impart such a seemingly strong sonic profile onto everything. Out it went after just a few days and I lost more reselling it than any other purchase before or since. 

For me it was the McIntosh MT2 turntable. I am pretty much a Mc guy and thought this would be a perfect intro back into vinyl. While it is well built by ClearAudio, mine would have varying speed issues and I replaced the belt once but finally sold it and moved on. I know have a VPI.