@larsman funny you should mention subs. I've gone with four Velodyne dd18+, and I'm very happy☺
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?
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bigtwinGotcha...horses for courses! |
Let's see.....what gear has disappointed me.... Emotiva ERC-4 CD player. Just......no. Returned to sender. Any of the Schitt DACs I have auditioned or tried. Just not a fan of the sound, feel or look of their products. Marantz CD/SACD players. They don't seem to have any kind of signature sound. Meaning, their different models all sound completely different from one another. I can listen to one of their higher end models and it sounds horrible. Then I listen to one that's a few steps below it, and it sounds wonderful. I never could figure how this could be, and in the end, pretty much gave up on trying/caring.
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Mine was the Top of the Line Marantz AV unit a few years back one side stopped working I called the 800 number had it less than a year never received a callback. A year later I gave a one-star review on Amazon and got a call from a Marantz VP could he help me I said no returned it to the store and purchased an Arcam
Regarding the guy who had the issue with PS Audio, I had heard about the issue with that CD Drive. I personally own a power plant 20 a BHK 250 amp a BHK preamp and DAC Additionally I own two Pass lab amps and have always every time had nothing but OUTSTANDING Service from PS Audio. I love purchasing great equipment from a company that you can still communicate with the founder. A friend of mind was calling Pass Labs and forgot about the time difference so it was very early in the morning in CA and Nelson answered the phone when he called. Compare this to my experience, with Marantz |
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I can't speak to any specific examples, but iirc, many SS receiver/amp makers in the early 70s were engaged in a race to the lowest possible traditional distortion figures. The result was the emergence of transient intermodulation distortion (TIM). I'd avoid amps from that era unless you have specific knowledge of them (as perhaps you do). Amps from the 80s & 90s are a much safer bet. |
My most recent underwhelming experience was trying the HiFi Rose 150. Bells and whistles aside (which didn't interest me anyway), it was not $3k better than my Auralic Aries G1 so I sent it back. Also buying the Lumin U1 Mini to replace the BS Vault 2i was very much a backwards step and I sent the Lumin back. |
Over the years I have been fortunate to work with dealers who not only had decent rooms to demo gear, but who let me take things home or delivered them so I could demo them in my listening room. So in my case here’s a list of gear that I auditioned extensively but declined to purchase. B&W 801 and 802 D3 - At first they sounded good, very detailed with excellent reproduction of timbre of instruments. But after 30 minutes of listening to some of our favorite recordings we found the sound tiring and thought it shrill and grainy. The switch from Ayre Acoustics monoblocks to McIntosh solid state monoblocks did not improve things. Perhaps a warmer, high powered tube amp would have helped, but I was not interested in buying new amps too. Luxman L-509X - Loved the sound at the dealer, but when I brought it home it clipped audibly in my large room at high volume on my relatively inefficient 4-ohm speakers, which drop to 2 ohms. Perhaps the impedance of the speakers, and the power requirements of my speakers and large room. (My amp is 250w at 8 and 500w at 4 ohms continuous, and good with 2 ohm loads, so twice the power of the Luxman integrated and never a hint of clipping.) Wilson Sabrina - Really nice sound but not worth the money in my view and not audibly enough superior to my old Aerial Acoustics Model 8b’s.
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Individual product: Naim Unitilite, $4000+ after 5 years CD stops working, 6 years the screen totally fails. Naim admit both are faults but still want $1000+ dollars to fix. Brand: Linn, ridiculous prices for ordinary products. Product type: high efficiency speakers never found one I liked most sound so bright (horns) I can't listen or so dull why would you bother.
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Years ago, worked my way up B&W’s speakers to Nautilus 800s. Mistake, they never sounded right in a 9X15 living room. Traded the B&Ws in on Wilson Watt-Puppy 7s. Perfect. Then went to Wilson Sashas, wonderful. Traded my Wilson Sasha’s on the Wilson Duettes when I moved to Florida. Duettes were lost in a large reflective room down here. Traded them in on some heavenly sounding Yvettes. Bought stillpoint ultras for the Yvettes. Maybe different but not better. They are under amps and stuff now. Just ordered a set of Wilson’s Acoustic Diodes. Will advise. Replaced my old original Shunyata Hydra 8 power conditioner with an Audioquest 5000. No improvement, back it went. Now have Shunyata Denali 2... sounds great. Love the Audioquest Hurricane power cords though. It’s been a great trip. |
Mini DSP SHD studio for Dirac live room correction on my 2 ch rig. Placed prior to the DAC it was never able to "sync" with my system and made it sound a little "strange" and I lost the tube magic. I did hear a bit better bass and it fleshed out some details but I kept switching it off. I paid for 2 sessions of remote tuning. |