What has been your costliest mistake in this hobby?

I forgot this one, but it was almost made right.

I went out into my shop one day and it was cleaned out. This was 6 years ago. My C22, 2 MC240, 4 TTs, 2 Reel to Reels, A foot locker of NOS valves (est value 25,000.)
A handbuilt, 11 band, tube, parametric, EQ with 2 external 3 way crossovers. My stratherarn ribbon speakers.

ALL the gear was packed in foul weather shipping crates.

A lot of tool and other things too.

The insurance paid 56k or something like that, The only big loss was the strathearn ribbon speakers, I couldn't find a source at the time. so they wouldn't replace the 6K or so for them, only depreciation of 2K or something..

BTW know who did it, told them they did it. A kid I helped out. It didn't go well for him. His bad ways caught up with him, sad...

I did ok though, considering.. First and only time someones done that to me..Hurt my feelings... Yup sure did.. Helped raise that kid...Little turd...

Regards

Without question the costliest mistake would be to take miilercarbon seriously.

These are all great responses....and I mean great in a sense that I’m not alone in my frustration. Its always fun to hear all the great sound we aspire to, but also fun to hear the mishaps along the way and how we arrive to where we are today!

Good stuff!

My biggest mistake was to buy to IsoAcoustics Gaia I with 220 lb limit. Although provided with a kit of different mounts, non was oassing to my speakers. On top a month later I got an attractive offer and upgraded my speakers to new ones with 400+ lb of weight. Now the beautifully built IsoAcoustics still stay at home in their nice exspensive boxes...

Years after the factory had shuttered, I was swapping out a PC to my beloved Kinergetics KBA 75. Either I plugged the new PC into the wall first, or neglected to shut the amp off... sparks flew amp blown, too costly to repair

I asked Stereo Fixers in Boca Raton and Music Technology in VA to "fix" the channel imbalance in my Luxman CL-32 pre-amp.  They BOTH charged me a ton of money and "couldn't fix the problem."

When I had my shop, if we could NOT fix something, we charged the customer the $20.00 "look-at" fee and nothing else.

I guess times have changed with shops now charging lots of money for what they CAN NOT do.

If I took my car to a shop and they could not fix it, I would never pay them, nor would they charge me other than a minimum "look-at" fee in my experience.  

Cheers!

Lol great idea for a thread!

For me, impulsively buying speakers before I realized that I shouldn't be "collecting" them.  

Back in the day, bought a PS Audio 200C, money thrown away. 

Audioquest cables (great product.......but)

OR

Now using Mogami, Canare, or Gotham from worlds best cables
for interconnects and speakers.
14 gauge power cords into a dedicated breaker and hospital grade outlets.
Power conditioners

......same cost
Found this out the hard way.

Getting married.

The costliest part of this audio journey for me is my inability to sell gear.
I sure I'm not the only one afflicted with this disease. The upside is that I find Easter Eggs when I'm hunting for something in the house that is unrelated.  Recently found three Hafler amps in a closet and a GAS amp (remember those?) in the attic. 
The only piece I ever sold was a Teac A-3340S 4 channel RTR, because I had two of them!
 
Upon leaving college I "sold" a pair of B&O speakers to my room mate. They were very good at the time mid-70s.........costly yes, because I never got paid for them.   

Having UPS deliver to me or from me. Never going to happen again.

Biggest mistake I made was buying a pair of highly regarded floorstanding speakers which got many great reviews without ever hearing them first.  They sounded God-awful so naturally it couldn’t be the speakers.  I replaced every component and wire in the system at a tremendous cost and after many tens of thousands of dollars, the system still sounded horrible.   After many sleepless nights, I sold the highly regarded speakers and started over.   Lesson learned.  I will never buy something like speakers without hearing them first.  That mistake cost me upwards of 40K. 

A well-known vintage audio dealer was selling tradeins on Ebay. I had purchased used equipment from them before and they were about two hours away, so anything I bought I could pick up personally rather than risk having it shipped. When I first bought equipment from them, the store’s owner took me to the back room and showed the unit on the test bench, which led me to assume that they do their own repair in house. So, after perusing their Ebay listings, I bought a Sansui AU-717 that had been owned by one of their regular cuctomers, who was its first owner.

I called the vintage audio dealer and reached the guy who handled their Ebay sales. I paid a modest amount to have the tech--who I later learned was an outside contractor--look it over and replace anything that needed it. That was my first mistake: not being clear about what I wanted done. Did I want a full restoration, or just "fix what’s broken" when, according to the listing, everything supposedly worked fine?

I was shown the Sansui powered up. Second mistake: I didn’t take the time to ask them to pop the hood and let me look inside. I took it home and installed it in the system (in retrospect, another mistake). On the third day it went into protection and stayed there.
At that point I should have taken it back to the seller. But, reluctant to make the drive and thinking that I needed to find a reliable repair shop closer to home, I took the crippled Sansui to a vintage audio dealer about half an hour away. That was my third mistake. Even he questioned why I didn’t take it back. When he showed me the unit powered up and working a few days later, he talked as if he did the work himself. Again, the charges were quite reasonable.

The Sansui failed again about a day later. I had intended all along to have it completely restored if I liked how it sounded. Trolling Ebay, I found a Sansui restorer there whose listing was persuasive. Now, before the ritual denunciations of Ebay start, I’ll state that I have bought and sold audio equipment on Ebay for close to a decade and, with few exceptions, had positive experiences. I emailed the restorer and asked whether he would be interested in repairing and restoring my Sansui AU-717. I would have to ship it most of the way across the country.Before he replied, however, I found that he had for sale a completely restored AU-717. I pulled the trigger on it. That purchase was a righteous one. The unit is still in my system and performs wonderfully.

He expressed interest in the crippled AU-717. We agreed on a price and I sent it to him. I enclosed copies of all the paperwork and emails describing the unit’s condition and the various repairs paid for. After he received it, he emailed me to advise that none of the work that I had paid for was done. Items that supposedly were replaced were not replaced. I had been scammed--twice. Inside, the unit was very rusty, almost as if it had been in a flood. It was so bad that he complained that he could not use it as the basis of a rebuild project, and we agreed on an adjusted price.
When I totaled up all my costs for this little adventure, I had wasted about $600. By going to the local shop for the repair, I had undermined whatever position I had to take the first AU-717 back to the seller.
So I must confess that I am a fool sometimes. Those who cheated me have more to confess than that.

STEALTH CABLES 0 resale crappy co STAY AWAY!!

Like many, dumping about $15k worth of albums for a pittance,  SME tonearm, several cartridges, etc chasing the lie of "perfect sound" forever by buying a what later proved to be garbage cd player, dozens of what later proved to be garbage cds, etc. All because I wanted to hear Keith Jarrett, etc with no surface noise... Now albums I bought new for $3 each in the 1970s sell for much more if they can be found at all.

Biggest mistake I made was buying a pair of highly regarded floorstanding speakers which got many great reviews without ever hearing them first. They sounded God-awful so naturally it couldn’t be the speakers. I replaced every component and wire in the system at a tremendous cost and after many tens of thousands of dollars, the system still sounded horrible. After many sleepless nights, I sold the highly regarded speakers and started over. Lesson learned. I will never buy something like speakers without hearing them first. That mistake cost me upwards of 40K.

Thanks for this interesting story.... I am sorry for your lost tough really...

One point, what you said is true for any speakers past some price point.... We must listen to them before buying, because past a certain price point there is not so much reviews by not only pro but non pro reviewers...

For low price speakers, i dont want to spell a price here, it is very possible to buy without hearing, i do it successfully, but because especially with older, or past legends, vintage, or very well sold few years one, the ocean of reviews gives to you all the cross information to make a good choice... My best to you....

Got a used Furman it-ref 15i. It made the sound dull. Yuck  Plugged AMP right into wall and life was good. Wall outlet upgraded too. 
Then got a new niagara 7000 and all was well. 
Put the Furman on the “B” system and it didn’t affect sound.
Stuff fits together or it doesn’t.  
Wasted $ on poor connects and speaker wire. Didn’t know enough back then. 

That's an easy one...

The tweak in which I was directed to take a Polaroid of myself bathing in a bathtub full of Diane St. Clair butter and then afterwards to place the photo in the kitchen freezer. 

The butter alone cost over $18,000.00. 

I mean what was I thinking (should have used the smaller tub in the spare bathroom)? 

DeKay 

Telling my 3rd wife what I spent on speakers.

I bartered with a very well regarded local dealer.  Made the mistake of thinking we were friends.  Traded a very large, very expensive oriental rug without agreeing on what I was to receive in exchange - we agreed that he would have rug valued.  Took a long time - months? - but eventually we agreed on a value, $10k.  With that, he was supposed to source a Garrard 401, build a plinth, and also I was going to get a new DAC.  He never delivered on anything - I would nicely remind him, and he’d make some encouraging noises, but 3 years later I sent an annoyed note and he freaked out. Said I was being unreasonable, we didn’t have a deal, blah, blah, blah.  Eventually, he had a guy from his shop dump the rug on my driveway when I wasn’t home. Had a new stain on it too.  Obviously haven’t talked to him since.  Oh well.  Found my own 401 in U.K., shipped it directly to Woodsong Audio (Chris Harban), who restored it and created a gorgeous plinth for me, color matched to my italian tube amp (purchased from the a-hole).  Still haven’t replaced my DAC or sold the rug, but got a beautiful tt!

One I just made buying an Aurender N100H which doesn't sound any better than the raspberry pi4 I using with the same DAC. Don't fall for the Streamer matters just as much as the DAC, BS. 

One I just made buying an Aurender N100H which doesn’t sound any better than the raspberry pi4 I using with the same DAC. Don’t fall for the Streamer matters just as much as the DAC, BS

Very sound and precious advice for all.... That confirm my experience , when you have a relatively good audio system upgrading a part is most of the times a bad idea.... Embedding the three dimension of any system gives way more S.Q. What matters is only the embeddings mostly, especially with well choosen basic good gear ....I learn it like you the hard way.... :)

I paid for my dac a small amount of money but well choosen i never look back....

Sorry for your near 2300 dollars lost djones....

Not lost, I can sell it but yeah some money lost. 

But thanks for your post, it is very important to enlightened others.... 7 years ago i would have read your post and that would made me think seriously.... And perhaps help me to controls my urge to upgrade....  

My best to you,

 i hope you will sell it for a good price for you....

Not the most costly, but one I am still peeved about.

Had my Thorens TD124 on a high shelf, SME tonearm eye level, see that needle drop.

Oh did it drop. Shure V15VxMR, removable stylus with brush, microline on BERYLLIUM.

I dropped that stylus, it landed on my shirt, saved by the beer belly, didn't hit anything hard. Whew!!! 

Damn if the beryllium shaft wasn't shattered, I'm still mad, I won't buy anything more brittle than Boron, and I worry about that. I kept the body but didn't use it for years, found out about Jico here, bought their stylus for it, SAS on boron. 

It's wonderful, I was truly enjoying it, but my first MC AT33PTG/II beats it, I just put them thru another race for several hours today. The tighter channel balance produces an amazingly tight rock steady center, and the greater separation plays off that. I actually had to toe my speakers in more for something that was un-naturally wide (easy for me, heavy monsters on 3 wheels on wood grid floor, like graph paper).

I’ve been streaming over 10 years now and have yet to hear a difference with streamers.  Everything else way more.  Well, all the other usual things anyhow.  It’s the Dac, Mac!

+1 kairosman

Yeah, I don’t drink, smoke, or gamble (well except driving on the roads in West Texas)


Finished building a pair of stand mount speakers that I still have, after sending them in for paint, which was by the guy next door to the speaker factory I worked.. I chipped one of the burgundy candy apple speakers, and had to have it repainted - of course not candy apple again.

Purchased a pair of floor stander speakers that I thought looked great and initially sounded ok, to never use them or sell them, lost in a move.

Forgot to have my D-class amplifier hooked up to speakers and blew a module, fortunately I knew a guy much cleverer than I who fixed it for me.

Purchased three mid-fi pre amps that introduced so much noise into my system that I have them back in boxes and in the garage. I use the volume control on my DAC straight to the power amp now.

There's probably so many little mistakes along the way I'll recall when others post theirs...

@kairosman for us it’s Audio.  Audio is our dope! 

mkgus

I love when trouble leads to 'better'.

what was the design error?

millercarbon

now that you mention CD’s,

1st: 8 tracks (hundred of them).

Cassettes made 8 tracks cheap, 6 for $5.00 (incl tax .88c each). Had no disposable money in those days, so every payday I would wander the music store, decided to buy stuff I would never spend any real money on, listen to them when I retire. Acquired a few hundred. Pressure pads rotted, worthless.

2nd: CD’s (thousands of them).

I quit smoking 32 years ago. Decided, as an incentive, the bills were getting paid, I will spend my cigarette money on music and music equipment. Carton a week was $700. in 1988. Gave myself a yearly rise in pay as cost of cigarettes increased .../yr, now $3,900 in NJ, $6,700 NYC.

Aside from some nice equipment, I bought a load of CDs, so many, I needed space, and normal 12" binders fit the inside discs between the rings, not fitting the booklet, so, Harrington’s had very nice deep leather binders. each page 8 discs with booklets, fit 80-100 stuffed each. Music, Movies, Music DVDs, eventually 45 binders. I never imagined how 22 years would add up (I quit this 10 years ago, when I retired age 62).

Then, rediscover LP, I play few CD’s now, but not many, and I am replacing my favorite CD’s with Vinyl if available.

Cannot sell them, plastic cases tossed, and I thought my sons would inherit this ’flawless’ collection. They don’t have a CD player in their house or car.

Thank goodness I kept my LP’s, people who quit LP gave me theirs, ..., weeding now, found successful cleaning method, down to 2,500.

Lost money: cost of 300 8 tracks, 3,000 CD’s,  37 leather binders, that’s no small potatoes.

Selling my (4) Marantz 9's for $10K over 30 years ago.  They went to SONY HQ in Tokyo but i kept the Marantz 7C which I am just now getting ready to sell.

More than a few to name, but the one that really sticks is when I burned up a set of drivers that cost $600 ea. They were new for um, maybe a couple days before I got the idea to add a tube buffer that I had worked on, but did NOT test! You can't make it from the listening chair to the power switch in time, no matter what.

I got busted forging prescriptions for a controlled opiate. So I lost my job and had to sell my system and $30,000 record collection. So about a $70,000 mistake. Now I listen to headphones and have a nice little system. Lucky to be alive. Been on Suboxone for 6 years. Better than methadone.

@elliottbnewcombjr,

’Cannot sell them, plastic cases tossed, and I thought my sons would inherit this ’flawless’ collection. They don’t have a CD player in their house or car.’


I wouldn’t be too surprised if they wouldn't have wanted them even if they had been intact.

It is a difficult notion, certainly for me, to get into my head that so much of the stuff that I’ve spent so many years getting hold of means so little to friends and family.

I think we attempt to create our own personalised worlds of experience, much like the kings and emperors in the days of old, which can ultimately have little meaning for anyone else. Much like Charles Foster Kane, but he was fortunate enough to have Xanadu, most of us are grateful for digital storage.

Ultimately, our entire expenditure on our audio hobby has be valued for what it has been worth to us, what meaning it had for us, and what pleasure it gave us.

It can be a serious mistake to think that our gear worth as much as we might like to believe, or anywhere near what we might have paid for it.

This industry is routinely littered with overpriced, overpromoted rubbish. Anyone unlucky enough to fall for it is therefore consequently forced to stick with it or accept considerable losses in moving it on.

But then audiophiles aren’t likely to get into audio to make money, are they?

Ultimately, our entire expenditure on our audio hobby has be valued for what it has been worth to us, what meaning it had for us, and what pleasure it gave us.

«This worthy grain of salt is a pearl»-Groucho Marx

So true, thanks....

My best to you....

Rekindled my audio pastime.  Bought speakers, good deal.  Bought amp, touched speaker wires together, blew amp.  Fixed under warranty, whew!.  Heard a strange fuzziness and ringing..sent inter connects back and passive preamp back(that I now don't need and sold) nothing wrong.  Never did figure that one out.  Sent in crossover because of fuzziness/ringing.  Got new op amps and a checkover for $160, a bargain.  Cat busted off my banana plugs on my speakers twice, now have spades.  Nice vender fixed for ZERO.  Bought streamer on Amazon, then bought Bluesound.  Sold original for almost new cost.  $10 loss, another whew!  Making homemade sound panels on the cheap and buying cheap bass traps,  Loss of $300.  So moral of the story is I dealt with good people and it didn't cost me much except chasing phantoms and changing gear in and out.  And now I have about $8k in everything and it sounds pretty darn good!!  All comes with the territory and it gave this newly retired guy something to do last winter.

I wouldn't necessarily call this a mistake.  But, I was shipping via USPS a non-working naim uniti serve music service back to Naim for repair.  I had a tracking number and shipping insurance.  It never arrived at Naim for repair.  The USPS lost the item.

I filed for an insurance claim and the USPS claimed that my receipt was not adequate.  They did not accept the Audiogon receipt I supplied.

Understand, that I originally purchased the item used from another Audiogon member, and Audiogon supplied their receipt after purchase.  Well, guess what, USPS not only lost the item, but wouldn't honor their insurance (which I paid for).

enjoy

Reading and believing reviewers that affirm that Hi-Fi experience and S.Q. experience being related to electronic design quality and progress only is mainly for those who can pay for it...


Totally false, but when you enter in this course to upgrade the electronic design of any part in the audio system, you forgot the essentials : any relatively good system will give to you an extraordinary experience if you embed it correctly, even at a relatively low price...

All audio magazines are market condioning mainly... They sell ready made branded products, they dont explain the basics and the methods to embed them, this will kill the urge to upgrade.... :)


Very costly for those customers who believes the gospel...

:)

My post dont negate the value of a good electronic design and his logical pricing at all, but my post negates the fact that this will constitute the MAIN of all audio factors for the S.Q. experience....

Electronic quality design progress dont exceed the  acoustical embedding  importance... Ask any acoustic engineer,  speakers cannot replace the room.... 

@elliott sell them here on the Gon as a bulk lot, plenty of us have cd rippers and or players... give it a whirl in lots of 100 or the book by book approach
best to you
jim

In about 2000 I sold my entire system after my daughter was born and gave my sound room in our house at the time for her bedroom. I had Vandersteen 2CE's Audible Illusions Pre Calif audio labs DAC and transport and sold it all for Rotel surround receiver and energy surround speaker system. That lasted about 6 months. I miss tubes

Hey it's only money....

Accidentally bumping the stylus on my Lyra Delos cartridge and knocking it off....

ended up trading it in for credit and purchasing Lyra Kleos

Sold my Marsh amp & preamp after my divorce. Sold it for pennies on the dollar. It felt like therapy then. Now I just feel like a dumb ass. 

Oops. Forgot to mention...sold my Maggie 1.6s and my Panerai PAM 001 after my divorce. Not even a year later, I bought used 1.7s and a Panerai 8Day. Go figure. 

I wanted to replace my Oppo 95 Blu-ray player with a new one.  A friend of mine insisted that I get the 105D model even though the 205 was  just introduced.
I bought a used 105 ($950) for almost the price of the new 205 $1250) which I now understand is a better machine.  The 205 is now selling for $5999 on Ebay!
What a stupid mistake! 

Just bough 5 pair, (yes 5) of Quad ESL 57s in solid cosmetic condition but with various needs. Not sure what I got myself into but I know for certain the $$ faucet will be wide open on these. Sending them up to the “Quad guy” in NH for the breakdown 😖

Not spending more on gear BEFORE I got married!

Too lazy to unload the gear I upgraded from.  Lots of cables, reclockers, power supplies, tube pre amps, phone pre amps, music servers a CD player I used for a month.  I have big plastic bins full of stuff.   My better half is telling me to get rid of all the cables after she went looking for an ethernet cord for her laptop.  Good thing she only looked in the bins labeled cables.