Most expensive Audio disapoinment?

1) Beta - Superior quality poor Sony marketing/licensing
2) Nakamichi ZXL1000 Tape recorder/player... amazing for a tabe but it was still just tape.... I agree about all Dragons that were sold as stated earlier...
3) Sony ES Dat Recorder/player - Loved it for making mixes... Copy protection killed another good medium
4) Pioneer 704 Laserdisc - Flawed Yes! but nothing looked better at the time (especially those rough first 3 years of DVD looked/sounded like crap compared to laserdisc)... Laserdisc rot... that sucks!

5) Toshiba HD-DVD - I hate how SONY has killed and dragged all the high end audio/video formats out because of worrying about their copy protection schemes..... so I'm voting with my pocket book for the other standard.. uggh, on the plus side I don't care if it becomes a paperweight just like my laserdisc player did, because the output is so insanely good on 103" screen that you have to be an early adopter.. what I'm not doing is buying content, just renting so save that bath$$$

I bought a Philips DCC recorder. Remember those? Nah, me neither. I wonder where that thing is right now....

My most expensive audio disappointment is more than likely someone else's pride and joy. I don't think I'll go there.

I agree with Vegasears that this could become a sensitive thread..so the following is purely personal:
A few years ago at the FSI Montreal there was a 5.1 Linn set up consisting of probably $50,000 of gear to play Dark Side of the Moon SACD 5.1.....bad is an understatement...was it Linn, was it DSOM in 5.1 that lost me based on my 2ch reference, dunno but I came out immensely disappointed.

Krell KSA 250 - arguably one of their classic amps.
Power, bass and nothing else.