Your most disappointing purchase or audition?


I've had a few.

bought a Naim Nait 3. Loved it in the store. Returned it within a week- way forward at home

Brought home some CJ preamp to audition perhaps 22 years ago. Noisy as anything and a turn off transient destroyed a tweeter (though years later i bought a CJ 17LS2 which I thought was the finest preamp I ever heard in my home)

Auditioned a VPI table (HW19) in a store- the store just could not get the belt to stay on. Bought a Rega instead. This was in perhaps 1990.

Fortunately, I never really experienced buyers remorse say 6 months or more after settling on a piece of gear.

Finally, there have been too many speakers that got stellar write ups which I just didn't care for.
128x128zavato
I've never bought anything that really sucked sonically.. I've had a Creek Destiny that just blew out a channel and getting it repaired was a 4 month nightmare. I also have a W4S Dac 1 that recently had a channel just crap out.. That sort of pissed me off since I missed the warranty by a few months and in the interim W4S increase their warranty from 3 to 5 years but wouldn't cover my very rare failure under the new warranty terms since when I bought mine it was three years.. I think they should have done it as good will, but oh well..
I agree, only because they extended the warranty anyway, you would think at these prices, High- end Audio would be more reliable!, In the 90s, this was alot less of an issue!
"you would think at these prices, High- end Audio would be more reliable"

I would expect that, not just think it.
I have had junk audio in my life time that is more reliable than alot of today's High- End audio.
I remember bringing home, on loan from my local audio dealer, on separate occasions, a Mark Levinson amp and a pair of Thiel spkrs. Both of the items were being raved about in the audio press but the amp got a solid 'meh' and the Thiels' were a complete disappointment. The only item I've ever bought and was disappointed by was the original Phillips CD recorder, due to it producing so many duds. I'd say it had a 25-35% failure rate! That said, I still recorded a load of CD's with it until replacing it with a Pioneer Elite and later a Tascam, both of which very rarely failed/fail me.