Has anyone else auditioned something that really was terrible?

How is GoldenEar not on this list like 5 times already? I have never heard something so well-reviewed that sounded so bland and with such poor imaging. We were a dealer for them temporarily, but couldn't sell them with a good conscience.

The other one is the Raidho D-1. We transported a set for a client from one house to another about 5 years ago and they sounded so bad I thought we may have damaged the tweeters. Seriously. We brought them back to the office and played them on 3 different systems for multiple employees and everyone agreed they just sounded bad. The B&W 805D absolutely crushed them above 80Hz. We even sneaked the 805D into the client's house while he was away and played them on the Zanden gear he had and the B&W was still way better. We told him we were concerned about the Raidhos which is why we brought them to our office to be checked out, but we couldn't find anything physically or electrically wrong with either one.
We never tried to sell the client on the B&W because we didn't want it to look like we were poo-pooing his gear. We just reconnected his D-1s and he said they sounded as they should. We were all shocked.

I auditioned for "Pirates of Penzance" once.  Does that count?

Schiit Audio Magni. 

Granted, this is only a $99 headphone amp, but how in the world can they sell it? Hard to describe actually, but it produced some really strange digital to analog conversion. Maybe I had a flawed unit, but I returned it the very next day. 

Denon and Marantz - awful.  I used to think Onkyo was a better budget A/V receiver, but after using Anthem - no contest for Anthem.  I A/B'ed Dynaudio Special 40's with Martin Logan Motion 40's - Motion 40 smoked the Dynaudio - that surprised me.  I was surprised that Classe class D amps (Sigmas) smoked both Moon and McIntosh.  Parasound Halo P6 was pretty rank, the phono preamp was worse than $29 Behringer.  Lost $500 to try that unit.  The $1.09 a foot KarmaKable still some of the best sounding speaker cable to my ears (10 guage tin coated copper).  I tried the PS Audio BHK250, sounded good, but underpowered - then I tried Jeff Rowland - ummm - no contest.

No not this week.