Stuff You Tried To Love
I know we talk a lot about confirmation bias- we buy something and then convince ourselves we like it. Or something like that. But did you ever buy something you wanted to love and just couldn’t make it work? For me, Esoteric X-05 SACD/CD player. Bought from a local who was upgrading to the X-03. Big, beautiful piece of gear, but I couldn’t get used to the sound after 6 months of trying. Sold it to another local- I insisted he listen before he bought and I believe he sold it soon after as well. Totem Forest and Hawk. I loved the whole concept. Slim, easy to live with. Couldn’t get them to work in my room. The Model Ones were much better. I had a couple of other pieces, but this is long enough. BTW, these were bought used without audition.
Most people don't get music. |
Oh my goodness, I love tubes. I even want one of those cool tube clocks! For me, it’s the NAD C658 all-in-one (preamp, DAC, streamer, DIRAC). The feature set sounded incredible and it used BluOS which I was familiar with from the Node I previously owned. I paid for the complete DIRAC version, invested in mic stand and purchased a UMIK. It sounded good for only a small portion of ownership, but I suspect it may have been due to a really good sweep in DIRAC. Great feature set, but never sounded musical and “right” in my system. Confirmation bias? 100%. But confirmation bias slowly goes away, too. |
i cannot name the company but 10 years ago, perhaps 12, i bought a low cost amplifier , it was so bad we discarded it with a friend after one minute... And it was not a damaged one . i sell it the next morning my friend do not want one too even for free ...and no break in will redeem it trust me... I bought it because of all unanimous reviewers ... Thats my point ...😁 I also bough and here i will name it because it is not american product , then no controversies, i bought a Hifiman He 400... Bad design and a sound less convincing than the Akg K701 which i dislike ...The Hifiman He 400 break on my head for no reason save bad design of the cups attachment to the headband ( yes i take care sorry about my headphones) ... Here too the reviewers were unanimous... I lost faith about singular reviewers here ... I started statistical analysis of users and of all reviews before buying .... It was a good decision ...😊 After that i go for 6 months of analysis for an amplifier and i was very lucky because more informed after an extensive search ... i own it till this day... i bought also 12 years ago a pair of active speakers well reviewed everywhere... I hated it ...but one year ago i modified them extensively and now they are audiophile grade speakers ,incredible so for the price i dont need anything else...M-audio AV 40 ... But if you use them as they are out of the box you will never listen to them at their best and they are really extraordinary if we modify the porthole design , the waveguide of the tweeter , if we control the resonance and vibrations by tuned damping and isolation sandwich and if we use a tube preamplification and protect them agianst EMI .. They became so good i would be afraid to buy anything under 1000 bucks... Not bad for 100 bucks speakers i hated for 10 years before using them the right way ...
Never trust one or two or even three official recognized reviewers... Imagine it is me the reviewer : The american company producing the low cost amp i hated will be in bankrupcy... It is a good thing i was not a reviewer... They certainly created better design after that... Hifiman will also had suffer a lot from me ... All their models are not bad... And M-Audio will have recived from me only a enough acceptable review with no praise as Guttenberg did , praising them... In a way i was lucky because it is after modi9fication and optimization that they shine but not before sorry Steve Guttenberg... But i must say they were only really used as computer speakers even if they called it audiophile computer speakers... Anyway it is not false AFTER modifications of design ...😁 Now i am in love with them after 10 years of hate ... Then dont trust completely reviewers, trust your creativity...
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I really wanted to like the Blue Lights. Got a C2700 preamp new on trial and back it went. Looked nice though. I also had a much longer love hate relationship with my Auralic Aries G2. Even modified the power supply. It was just plain finicky on my network. I have been told I am hard to get along with. |
