Worst mismatches in equipment: your warnings

My worst was the Supratek Chenin preamp/phono stage with a Clearaudio moving magnetic cartridge. It sounded terrible. Once I replaced the cartridge with a Denon DL 103 moving coil, it sounded great.

Never use Audio Tekne speaker cables with a Innersound ESL amp!

I can't say this is a bad sounding mis-match cause its not, in fact it sounds better than it has any right to for the price, but NAD gear and Totem Arros should not be matched together...the problem only exists with the Arro model where the woofer plate and tweeter plate overlap and there is metal to plastic contact...the discharge frequency of NAD gear causes the woofer and tweeter plate to vibrate causing a distorion in the tweeter at around 500-600hz..its an easy problem to fix, and it may go unnoticed unless your a careful listener but its there...i also heard the same problem with bryston gear so i can only assume they wouldnt be a good match either...
in every other respect the sound is good though

Pass X0.2 preamp to biamp Levinson 33H and 336.

Impedance mismatch. Both great products however not good together.

Best,

Paul :-)

My current Atma-Sphere/Wilson combo. Whoops! How I missed the obvious impedance mismatch between the power amp and speakers is a cautionary tale for anyone putting together a system component by component. I was so focused on finding a great tube amp with a high input impedance for my passive linestage, that I completely forgot to think about matching impedance between the power amp and speakers. It wasn't until, about a day before the amp arrived, that I looked behind one of my WATTs and noticed the following text: "IMP. 4 OHMS". Doh! So the lesson learned is, remember to keep the entire system in mind when evaluating equipment for purchase.

Acoustic Zen Hologram speaker cables and Legacy Speakers.
Disaster.

BAT VK500 amplifier and Eminent Technology LFTVIIIa speakers are a great match, but do not use Zu WAX bi-wire speaker cables between the two. Congested, closed in, flat sound.. it was horrible. DH Labs Q10 proved to be a great cable.

Anything Bose will mismatch with your ears! Sdatch, that's one of the parameters of Atma-sphere amps...you should use a higher impedance speaker. However, I've heard from many that Paul Speltz's "Zero-former" will cure your mismatch and give you the sound that you are looking for.

Interesting response from Jeffloistarca, I also have the BAT Vk-500 with Alon V/Circe's and had a similar experience with Cardas Neutral Reference. Surprisingly the DH Labs Q-10 provide a cleaner, more open and more dynamic sound, only bettered by the NR in presenting midrange textures. I could not live with the overall boring, flat presentation of the Neutral Reference, no matter how smooth they are. Maybe the silver wires are more synergistic because the BAT is a bit dark sounding.

Fatparrot
Your Bose comment was so funny ant true.
Regards
George