2. best-of
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What are some of the mistakes, failures or bad purchases of your audio history?

Kind of the opposite of "best of".  I, like most, have made some mistakes or purchases that were poor choices. 

The worst were some speakers "I built".  Anything I owned that was "quadrophonic", Lamp cord for speaker wire, BSR turntables...yes they were in my "poor just home from Vietnam" days...but still.., early Japanese receivers that were not much better than appliances, ...and even though I got into some of the best in later years, some of my beginnings were more bad than humble,...but my taste in food, friends, mates and many other "things" went through what can kindly be called a "learning curve". 
  

jusam
jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

Selling my pair of Quad 57's which I had in use from 1981 to 2000. In the last few years I have bought two pairs of the Quads!

sns
3,003 posts
 

Audio Research SP9 Mk.III I purchased late 90's. Expecting much from this pre, AR well respected, so disappointed, low resolution/transparency, really just a bore.

ozzy's avatar
ozzy
7,207 posts
 

Cary SACD player. The sled kept slipping and many of the discs used would show as no disc inserted. Many times, the disc would stay in the player which required taking the top off and manually removing the stuck disc.

I sent it to Cary several times while under warranty. They said they greased the sled, and it did work for a while.

But once out of warranty, they said I needed a new circuit board at a very high cost. No consideration for the fact that it was serviced for the same problem under warranty.

Once returned I ended up selling it along with a Cary SL-05 Dac and swore I would NEVER buy another Cary unit.

ozzy

macg19
665 posts
 

My one and only sale on AG. A Pro-Ject RPM 10 Carbon TT. I'm out $2500 and now the proud owner of a crate full of really heavy trash. 

edcyn
1,876 posts
 

I've had my share of recalcitrant gear over the years, but I'll just talk about the stuff that's happened lately. My Mytek Brooklyn Bridge streamer/DAC sounded great and even had a very good phono input, but it went belly-up maybe two days after the warranty lapsed. Neither Mytek nor the folks I bought it from, M**** D****, wanted to touch it. This was even after I said I'd pay for shipping and out-of-warranty repair. In any case, ever since, the device has been a veritable brick, sitting silently in my garage.  Its replacement, a Cambridge CXN, works fine. So does the old Moon phono step-up that I fished out of the closet so I could play my records.

 

And oh yeah, maybe just under a year ago my PS Audio AC junction box started to smoke. Luckily, my wife worked as a film editor and happened to possess a pro-level, movie industry replacement. And you know what? The replacement junction box garners me slightly better sound.

 

My Marantz CD/SACD player went south, as well. Also not long after the warranty expired. Then there were the bad set of tubes I got from Upscale Audio. But in sharp contrast to my other adventures in the high end world, Upscale Audio was jet-quick in sending out replacements. I love those guys!

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