While many are asking what are the best preamps, best amps, best this or best that, wouldn't it be nice for others to know our worst nightmares with certain products?
:-)
My top 3s are:
1) Kora Eclipse preamp From an Canadian member, the preamp arrived DOA. SInce it was shipped from Canada, return shipping cost and logistics are typically expensive and brutal. So the preamp was sent to a self-proclaimed Kora fan and expert in VA. Turned out, the repair cost was way more than I bargain for. The seller refused to fund it adequately. Ended up a super overpriced purchase with 2 months down time. Lesson learnt: Just return anything that is DOA even the seller talks sweet and offers to repair it to save you money.
2) Kora Galaxy Reference power amp From the same Canadian member, this unit arrived with all output tubes mixed up. The amps kept blowing fuses and overheat. Bias pots do not work. Again, I was too nice to have it 'repaired' at seller's expense. Not a single penny was collectible from this seller, however. The unit was sent to the same Kora 'guru' who wasted near a grand of my money to fix it - turned out nothing was fixed, the unit suffered additional shipping damages, and I was labelled as a tube idiot by this repairman who just conned me $1k. Out of total frustration, I hammered the amp into pieces and sold it as scrap for $4 in Audiogon. That's a near $3k loss! Lesson learnt: Take anger management class.
3) Krell PAM-3 dual-mono preamp Arrived working for first few days with noisy volume pot, then the unit caught on fire - the caps melted with lots of tar inside. Seller refused to take it back obviously since it was not DOA. Sent to Krell for repair, only to be told the repair estimate was near $3k (including $350 return shipping cost from Connecticut to New Jersey - $250 of which is for a Krell shipping box). Made perfect sense to me when I had purchased it for $550.
Other than my mid fi HT gear, which i Iiked but always has horrible resale due to format and connectivity obsolescence, the following are my worst purchases:
Cheap BDplayers- my 1st Blueray player, Samsung , sounds horrible on music and is worth nothing on resale market.
Tom Evans Groove - lived with it for about 7 yrs, never happy with the sound and could never get rid of the hum picked up from my pre amps transformer.
2yrs after buying it used, one channel went out and the really wierd US distributor charged me $900 to have Tom fix it, plus i had to send it back to England myself. Finally bit the bullet and bought a Zesto which fixed the hum and was significantly better sounding. Even tho I bought groove at 50% off $4000 retail, I still took a 35% loss to sell it not including the $900 repair.
Tom generally has a very good rep, so don't want to bash his company, but the Groove was not a good fit in my system.
"Blowing boards all the time until it was too hard to repair! I wonder if I am the only unlucky one?"
Mine blew up and pieces flew out the top and hit me in the face while I was sitting in my listening chair. It was kind of funny. And a good excuse to upgrade.
For me, all 3 came to Audio Research VT100! I got all 3 versions and they all needed repairs after repairs!! Very good sounding amp but just poorly designed. Blowing boards all the time until it was too hard to repair! I wonder if I am the only unlucky one?
To sum up... Is my system perfect? No. Do my speakers go very low and very high? No. Do they have full coherence through their frequency range? Yes!! Am I satisfied with it? Fully %100! (Until I move) Am I an Audiophile? Apparently not. Am I a Music lover? Yes, %100
As Winston Churchill said, "My tastes are simple: I'm easily satisfied with the best" But really, I had decided on a SET based system, without hearing one prior. I finally decided upon a particular maker. My Preamp choice was complimentary by "specs". To be honest, most of my cables were somewhat quickly purchased here by choosing popular brands and models that would be easily resold when that part of the chain is ready to be more "refined" by listening, and given the fact that I am in a temporary small apartment, that will have to wait until I move. You can read the thread titled "calling all horn lovers" where I describe a pair of speakers that I have which are waiting in the wings to be for a larger location. A very well respected manufacturer, (and certainly by me) who shall remain nameless for now, said "You'll have about 100 percent chance chance of getting them wrong" That will be more challenging. We'll see in due time :)
Iso 10-21-13: Isochronism Sentence example: You are delushioned with feelings of self grandeur. Think outside the padded cell :) 'Actually' very funny.
"Maybe I was just plain lucky or perhaps delushioned into thinking that it actually does sound good :)"
I was going to say that if it sounds good then it is good. It really can't be an illusion. But now I find that delushioned isn't a word. I'm pretty sure I understand what was meant by it, but it leaves me in a bad spot. By me using the word illusion in reference to the word delushioned, I can't help but think now I'm at fault. And I can tell you from experience, when something is at fault, its usually my fault.
While I'm trying to figure how to get myself out of the above mess, I have a question about how you put your system together. Maybe you are lucky, but the results are what matters. You have a system that you are happy with. What I want to know is, that if you didn't demo anything, and went just by reviews and opinions, how did you get around matters of personal taste? For example, I'm very sensitive to high frequencies. If a system doesn't get the HF's right, I can't listen to it. The point I'm trying to make is that without actual listening experience, I would have never known that. And that's just one example out of many different types of personal choices you need to make when building a system. Without any type of reference, how do you make those kind of decisions?
Zd542, I spent a few years of many nights reading of others more vast experiences on the internet and then researching many components. No auditioning of anything. I bought %95 of my system here in six months checking the ads everyday. Never sold or traded anything, what I bought I have and use. Maybe I was just plain lucky or perhaps delushioned into thinking that it actually does sound good :)
"10-17-13: Isochronism Zd542, I had researched each component in my system at great length before purchase. I am happy with my culmination."
What kind of research did you do? Please share it with us. As far as I can remember, I think you are the first person that I've come across that hasnÂ’t made any mistakes when buying audio equipment. We all make mistakes with our systems. For the most part, that's our research. I know I joke around a lot, but please don't take offence. I really am curious as to how you do it.
Where I go wrong, and probably many others, is how to bridge the gap between all the research you do leading up to the purchase, and then face the reality of how the component performs over time. There are always qualities that don't reveal themselves until after you live with the piece for a while.
Wc65mustang, Apparently the "d" key did not connect. Also apparently you are very hyper critical. You had PM'd me not long ago. The full body of your message was "move on" I had no idea what your problem was with me as gave no indication. Positives always out-weigh negatives.
"Yeah it is still hooked up, but it is turned off, (rarely ever turned on actually), and since I have 3 dedicated circuits, (one for my preamps, and analog source; another for my amps, and lastly, one for my digital sources), I have never felt that the Sony unit ever affected the sound."
It makes sense that you don't have any problems given the separate lines. I had mine on the same line as everything else. For me, a JPS Digital AC power cord fixed the problem. It has some type of a filter in it.
"10-14-13: Shakeydeal VAC PA 100/100 Meadowlark Shearwater HR Sonic Frontiers Power 2"
Did you try and play music through any of that stuff? The tubes they put in those amps aren't the same kind of tubes you weld with.
Yeah it is still hooked up, but it is turned off, (rarely ever turned on actually), and since I have 3 dedicated circuits, (one for my preamps, and analog source; another for my amps, and lastly, one for my digital sources), I have never felt that the Sony unit ever affected the sound.
One of my lemons was the Klyne System 7 phono. Based on all the reviews and praise this should have been very good. It was blown away in terms of the level of detail, soundstage transparency, speed and timing quite comprehensively by both my modified 1960 Marantz 7 and also my 1980's Theta B tube preamp ( standard apart from some cap upgrades ).
The other was a Helius Cyalene tonearm purchased second hand that arrived covered in silicon and the antiskate broken, necessitating a rebuild from the factory. Either the seller covered the vertical pillar in silicon for ease of adjustment or the silicon inside the elastomer anti skate mechanism leaked.
The problem is many worst purchases may be a result of a system mismatch of some sort, and is no reflection of the quality of the product itself
In my opinion is a mismatch a problem with technical datas, for example the output of a Preamp does not match with the input of the connected amp. A total different story is the quality of Tone for example or speed problems with a turntable. Here you can find indeed a lot of units which accelerate depression. But at the end of day, there is a Fangroup for everything and a thread like this one is interesting.
The worst of my purchases were early on: 1)I bought a pair of those direct-reflecting bose 501 to replace my $50 Pioneer two-ways, and returned them. Man, they were awful.
2)I did not realize how bad my (home-made) flexy rack sounded until it was replaced by a lighter, more wobbly ikea lack.
3) LFD Mistral looked good; sounded bad. Replaced with a far better SA-2000, which of course broke.
Aragon 2004 MkII - very clean sound with tight bass but lifeless, not musical at all
Sonic Frontiers Power 2 - sounded OK but the selector switch went bad. I emailed Chris J from Parts Connexion who confirmed an issue with the cheap plastic switch for a small percentage of his amps but he refused to cover repairs (although was not under warranty). Would have thought a $5000 amp would not use $6 plastic selector switches. My friend, a good tech, needed 8 hours to under wires, boards.... to replace a simple switch. Terrible design if you ask me. I sold this beast and acquired Monarchy Audio class A amps which cost less and sound considerably better
NAD C542 cd player - great HDCD sound, CD is average. Skipped almost from the get go. Found out NAD had serious issues with early production runs of this player. My friend also had 2 other more current NAD cd players - both having issues. I will never purchase another NAD cd player
guess i'm better than most, w/ no horror stories. my list... 1) soundlab U2s---just took me getting them installed in my home to know i hate stats. no cojones. 2) audioquest redwoods ---these cables were single handedly responsible for another $25k worth of upgrades due to their transparency. damn things. 3) nimbus isolation stand---the mad scientist isolation platform, about as high maintenance as a coked-up supermodel, but it did work well.
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