Hall of Shame

Greg, i think some companies are more consistent with their "house sound" than some others are. Musical Fidelity for one seems to be pretty consistent. Like anything else though, it is a matter of personal taste whether you like that "flavor" or not. On the other hand NAD is one of those "flip-flopped" companies. Their amps ( warm and forgiving ) sound different from their pre's ( lean and metallic ). You would think that the designers would voice the components to be either compatible together or share common sonic characteristics, but who knows.... Sean
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Sean, I think that some manufacturers started out as either pre or amp "specialists". Given their original "killer" product, they then set out to pair it accordingly... which is fine but, it seems that the mechanics invlolved in casing pre's vs. amps (damping, shielding, emi filtering, etc), let alone the electronic circuitry design & choice of components -- is a herculean task, maybe, when it comes to voicing components alike?

I'm suggesting that although we DO get some up-front taste the brand is connected to (example: Symphonic-line - "fast & dynamic"), with some up-market pre-power pairs certain subtle characteristics we have connected to one or the other component seem absent...

Now, if we tweak one or the other component, MAYBE... but why have to tweak?
Cheers

I want to preface my remarks with the qualification that all of this is highly subjective. In other words,it is difficult to criticize anyone's post-that is what they heard in a certain room with certain equipment.That said,i will add Mark Levinson amplifiers to the list.Maybe it is the room at my local dealerhsip-sound environment in omaha,ne.That is the only place i have seriously listened to levinson amps,as they have sold them for many years.I have always walked away from these systems,some costing over 100k,un-impressed.I recall going from the over 100k system (levinson,revel salons,etc.)to a room next door containing a levinson cd player,VTL 450 monoblocks into aerial 10t speakers and was just blown away-i thought it put the more expensive system to shame.

1. All "high-performance" cables (with few exceptions for speakers that have demanding impedence curves in the upper frequencies where the cable's "low impedence" will be of use).
2. Most all pure vacuum tube circuits (some hybrids are ok and tubes can do well in an fm tuner)
3. All Class A/B amplifiers (the designer should have just stuck with class B if s/he couldn't afford the heatsinking for class A).
5. D'appolito and line array designs (only the latter one's incorporating electrodynamic transducers)-both have too many interference problems that there is no way around.
6. Ridiculously overpriced gear given the cost of its parts (design time does not makeup for it): 47labs sakura systems gets top place-$600 for a piece of stupid 28g wire and that dumb gaincard amp, Genesis follows a close second with thier crap-$12 tweeters and sub-$200 ribbons in a $90,000 system?)
7. All vibration control devices-microphony in most gear is inaudible. Turntables exempt, its important here.
8. Many more not caught in any category who missed the boat because of bad engineering choices.
9. Burn-in CD's, wonder contact cleaners, etc., etc., etc.

10. Compressed digital audio