Your most disappointing purchase or audition?

Charles, I'm very happy to see today's development, as referenced above. If I may say so without being presumptuous, IMO your posts are consistently among the most perceptive, knowledgeable, well balanced, and (unless circumstances warrant otherwise) gentlemanly posts to be found here.

Joe (Trelja), thanks for the response. I did some searching to see if I could identify anything that might account for the amazing diversity of opinion about the Acoustic Zen speakers, perhaps such as impedance characteristics that might make their performance unusually amplifier dependent. But to no avail whatsoever, although I couldn't find a measured impedance curve.

One of the things I looked at in the course of that research was the technical information page of the manufacturer's website. Unfortunately, what I found were the same three paragraphs repeated 15 times! Presumably the speakers were designed with greater attentiveness :-)

Best regards,
-- Al

Al,
Thank you for your very kind comments. The feeling is mutual.
Charles,

Wow, this little question I asked got way off track.

So I'll list some more things that have been a disappointment, now that I have had more time to think about is.

My first pair of B&W speakers, a total disaster. Years later I bought a pair of CDM-1's which were quite good. I eventually sold them, nearly for what I paid new.

A pair of large Advents, around 1990. Kept them less that a week.

A pair of Celestion speakers. Auditioned them. Yuk.

I thought of 2 more that I really disliked. I borrowed for an audition in my system a Plinius integrated when they first came out. (9200?) Terrible. Solid state at its worst, and I am not opposed to solid state at all.
Also, a stand mounted speaker by Hales. I can't remember the name or model number, but it had a distinctive grill with a protruding diagonal piece of heavy gauge coat hanger type wire behind the cloth grill. They were very unbalanced, unnatural sounding and fatiguing. I wasn't surprised when the company went under after that experience.

The cary cd-500 cd-player 1st, 2nd, The Ayon cd-2s cd-player.