Focal 806 monitors. Just a dry and lifeless sound. Didn't work for me and I sold them pretty quickly to someone who appreciated them.
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?
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@mceljo I think you are asking what equipment has not prespecteformed to our expectations, given the money paid, as in better sound? So far, I am reading about failures in equipment, which is not really the same thing. More bad luck than musical performance? It might have been better to ask what if any equipment you've paid more for, surprised to the upside in musical performance? My experience in almost all upgrades has been disappointment in the sound improvement. Not to say there wasn't any, but the cost/benefit relationship really falls off when you have any kind of decent system to start with. By example, I had a $600 Audiolab 6000 CDT in my system. I now have an Esoteric K-03XD. Yes, I did hear an improvement in sound. Did it justify the obscene increase in system cost? No. I can say the same with moving from a $10K Triton Reference to a $25K Acoustic Zen Crescendo Mark ll, or $25K Focal Sopra 2. (Canadian dollars) It was splitting hairs between the three sets of speakers. It would be a wonderful world if spending twice as much on any piece of equipment brought huge improvement to the overall sound of my system, but sadly, for me anyway, this has never been the case. Well, there was that one 3 foot power cord that blew my mind with the increase to sound stage, more air between the instruments, a nearly 3 dimensional aspect to the performance and don’t get me started on how tight the bass was or the incredible improvement to the midrange and highs…….. Sorry but I couldn’t resist. 🤣 |
Adcom GFP-565 preamp (early Nineties). Highly touted by the Mags but extremely ordinary performance. Replaced with a Classe 6. Now you're talking... Another was the Magnepan MMG speakers (mid Seventies). Were pleasing to the ear until I heard some Conrad Johnson "Synthesis" floor standers which were clearly superior in every way. Granted, the CJs were 3-4 times the price but... Lastly, for whatever reason, I've never been able to warm up to Audioquest cables. Not extensive exposure but never seemed to keep them more than a few months. I did own and enjoy their "Lapis" phono cables for a few years.
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