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

Vincent Audio SV-500 hybrid amp. It was sterile, lean, and bright sounding.

It sounded like bad Class D, even though it was AB with a tube input stage. The person who bought it from me loved it though so taste matters. 

  • Simaudio W-6 monoblocks
  • Conrad Johnson Premier 140 tube amp
  • Musical Fidelity Nuvista M3 integrated amp
  • VAC Phi 200 tube amp
  • Bryston 4BST SS amp
  • Dynaudio Confidence C2
  • Harbeth Super HL5

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.

 

 

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.