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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
curtdr
348 posts
 

@petaluman

Yeah, I do still have an Onkyo Integra TX-88 receiver from 1986 that is much better than those 70’s products... closer in sound quality to the new Marantz nr1200, but still the new Marantz is better and plus has just as much power and all the modern features and hookups.

fredfung
1 posts
 

Aavik U-380. Sounds brittle, bright and with a high pitch whinny noise. Just like a PA amp.

NAD M10. Unengaging, flat and lifeless

Esoteric K-03XD. Smooth is all it got.

 

sameyers1
138 posts
 

Over the years I have been fortunate to work with dealers who not only had decent rooms to demo gear, but who let me take things home or delivered them so I could demo them in my listening room. So in my case here’s a list of gear that I auditioned extensively but declined to purchase. 
 

B&W 801 and 802 D3 - At first they sounded good, very detailed with excellent reproduction of timbre of instruments. But after 30 minutes of listening to some of our favorite recordings we found the sound tiring and thought it shrill and grainy. The switch from Ayre Acoustics monoblocks to McIntosh solid state monoblocks did not improve things. Perhaps a warmer, high powered tube amp would have helped, but I was not interested in buying new amps too.

Luxman L-509X - Loved the sound at the dealer, but when I brought it home it clipped audibly in my large room at high volume on my relatively inefficient 4-ohm speakers, which drop to 2 ohms. Perhaps the impedance of the speakers, and the power requirements of my speakers and large room. (My amp is 250w at 8 and 500w at 4 ohms continuous, and good with 2 ohm loads, so twice the power of the Luxman integrated and never a hint of clipping.)

Wilson Sabrina - Really nice sound but not worth the money in my view and not audibly enough superior to my old Aerial Acoustics Model 8b’s.

 


 

 

seanheis1
624 posts
 

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. 

pdreher's avatar
pdreher
1,208 posts
 
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  • 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
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