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blackraven
04-06-2010, 01:40 PM
I saw this question on the Audio Circles forum and found it interesting to post here.

So what was your most dissapointing purchase for your system?

Mine have been the modifications of my Music Hall 25.2 cdp from reference audio mods, my Monitor Audio S1's (should have gone with the PSB B-25's or NHT Classic 2's)
the Electro Harmonix 6CG7's tube's that I recently bought in my tube rolling endeavor (too sibilant), and the Marantz SA8001 SACDP that I sold.

frenchmon
04-06-2010, 01:43 PM
So what disappointing about the Monitor Audio S1's

frenchmon

blackraven
04-06-2010, 01:49 PM
Not very detailed and treble is rolled off, midrange is too forward. They are not bad speakers and sound decent for the highly discounted price of $400 that I paid (they sold for $650pr). I bought them without auditioning them based on their reviews. They are smooth sounding and have great tight midbass for a small speaker. I just expected more from a speaker that is in the same price range as B&W 685's and NHT Classic 3's.

02audionoob
04-06-2010, 02:12 PM
I always exercise such caution and care in every purchase that I can't think of anything that has truly disappointed me other than the problems with my Music Hall MMF-5, which I suspect were caused by abuse and shipping. I wound up getting a partial refund that made it a bargain and it does sound good.

rob_a
04-06-2010, 04:16 PM
I bought a Denon 998 receiver for a second system, paid $400 for it, thought I was getting a good deal. What a piece of cr@p that thing was! No power, no low end, no pre-outs for second amp. cheap remote. I think it was made for Bose speakers. :p

blackraven
04-06-2010, 06:22 PM
C'mon, there has to be more people that have bought equipment that did not live up to their expectations.

jrhymeammo
04-06-2010, 06:24 PM
-Marantz 8001.
-PS Audio HCA-2
-MMG with modified crossover.
One of the speakers arrived damaged, but I could still very much tell how the speakers sound. Perhaps my expectation and personal taste was way off.

Ajani
04-06-2010, 06:30 PM
Only two HiFi products I've bought have dissapointed me:

NAD C352 Integrated Amp - Boring sound with my Mission Speakers at the time, boring looks and a pain in the @$$ remote volume control...

&

NAD C521BEE CD Player - I didn't find the sound to be a substantial upgrade from my sub $100 Panasonic DVD player or my mac mini.... Plus it had all manner of issues reading discs (that my old Technics CD player never did)... and of course it looked equally boring to match the C352 amp....

TheHills44060
04-06-2010, 07:44 PM
Sony D-33 Discman - The thing was way too sensitive and always skipped plus the output jack was loose causing drop outs.

dakatabg
04-06-2010, 08:17 PM
My worse was Sansui S-X700 receiver. I own the 9090DB and the 5000A, I was like I will get this receiver expecting that it will sound similar to my vintage stuff. When I connected the speakers the sound was so cheap and nothing even close to the Sansui I know.

basite
04-07-2010, 03:18 AM
so far:
Rega RB-301.

good arm, really, it is, although I more like the RB300, the 301's bearing housing is made out of some kind of plastic, but nonetheless...

when I first installed the arm, it seemed that the internal cable was not connected to the external cable, never was, so off to england it went again, under warranty of course, came back and worked fine for a month or 2, then I discovered the cable broke at the solder joints...
no longer under warranty, sending it to Rega would cost me €250 for a rewire. Ended up installing a cardas Din plug for tonearm cable, rewired it and ditched the original cable. The internal cable is fairly good, the external cable is just regular cheap coax with somewhat better connectors and a thicker rubber shield around it.
The Din plug is probably the best upgrade I've done to the arm so far...

Keep them spinning,
Bert.

JohnMichael
04-07-2010, 03:47 AM
I must say the Ascend CBM 170SE's. Only because they are too forward in presentation.

I am surprised by the disatisfaction with the Marantz SA 8001.

Hyfi
04-07-2010, 03:58 AM
I will have to say my ROTEL RCD-1072 which is not a bad player overall.

When I first got it, it started flaking out in the first month and would not read disks properly. It was sent back to Rotel for repair. This is the first disappointment as I should have just been given a new player and not forced to repair a brand new player.

When I got it back, it did work much better but I still have a few purchased CDs that it will not read/play but the same disk will play on every other $29 - $300 CD player I have put the same disk in. I made a copy of the same disk with Nero and it will play on the Rotel but the original will not.

The other thing is it has a real hard time with long CDs and flakes out when it gets close to the outer edge of a long or overburned disk.

audio amateur
04-07-2010, 08:31 AM
-Velodyne 5.0 speaker kit. The sound is nothing special and the bass non-existant (I suppose that is to be expected being as they are 'sattelites'). The worst part though, is the volume limiter which kicks in rediculously early.

-Jamo E4.1 Sub. Very cheap driver and very cheap construction. The amp is ok. Overall SPL is weak and bass is a little 'slow'/'muddy'. Poor bass extention too.

frenchmon
04-08-2010, 10:16 AM
An old Marantz integrated in the 80's...cant remember the model number but one side always would go out....sent it to get repaired and the same...the left channel was out.

frenchmon

ParrotHead_FA
04-10-2010, 05:01 AM
I've been pretty satisfied overall with most of my audio gear purchases over the years. I usually put my money into better preamps, processors and amps, and build or modify speakers to custom tailor the sound to my preferences and listening room. The one noteable exception was a B&K 125.3 power amp I got to power a center channel and 2 surround speakers on my main home theater. The power on/off button broke in the first couple months I owned it. No big deal, as I usually have my amps connected to a power supply which has it's own off switch. But recently, all the outputs started going into the crapper... now any speaker connected to the amp's terminals sound like a clock radio playing from the next room, even with the volume all the way up. Maybe I'm just being an *******, as the thing is 10 years old now, but this system is not used all that much. We watch tv on it maybe a couple hrs a night, and play movies and cd's on it a few times a week, and when friends are visiting. But the other amps in the system are all performing 100%, and for a brand that advertises quality build, I would have expected it to last longer with only moderate use. Think I'll stick with ATI and Outlaw amps from now on. They are moderately priced units big on power and performance. I can easily push any speaker I have built to its limits and beyond and still have clean detailed sound with any of my ATI amps. Dave

TheHills44060
04-10-2010, 06:26 AM
Hyfi reading your post made remember my Rotel 1070 preamp. The thing performed fine for 5 years then it couldn't have been 2 weeks after the warranty was up when it died on me. The unit would power up and i'd get a tiny faint sound through the phono input but that was it, everything else was dead as a doornail.

Poultrygeist
04-12-2010, 04:24 PM
Classe CAP-150 - as sterile as a eunuch.

atomicAdam
04-12-2010, 08:00 PM
I suppose this isn't really a regret list, more like a 'wish it was different' list.

SimAudio Moon LP3 - because the power adapter went bad a couple months after purchase, but give SimAudio cred they replaced quickly and w/o complaint. Though set up has been a bit of a pain, though that could be me.

Rega P3/24 - over all great, but for ~$1300 I would have like the power adapter female part to be soldered in straight so the male part would fit all the way in., also, i don't know, seems like a lot of plastic for $1300.

AVA OmegaStar 250EX - very small speaker cable terminals, suppose would be fine if using banana or spade termination, but if not, very irritating. And in all honesty, after listening to it on some speakers with a more detailed mid range, it seemed the amp's warmth in the mids was really distortion that wasn't as apparent with the RS6 speakers. Though maybe this assessment is being hastily made.

blackraven
04-12-2010, 08:07 PM
Adam, if you are getting distortion in the midrange with the Omegastar then I would contact Frank VA about it.

atomicAdam
04-12-2010, 08:45 PM
Adam, if you are getting distortion in the midrange with the Omegastar then I would contact Frank VA about it.

Ok, I've got to open up the pre-amp and send him a photo anyways - so I'll bring that up as well.

-adam

manlystanley
04-13-2010, 01:44 AM
I saw this question on the Audio Circles forum and found it interesting to post here.

So what was your most dissapointing purchase for your system?

Mine have been the modifications of my Music Hall 25.2 cdp from reference audio mods, my Monitor Audio S1's (should have gone with the PSB B-25's or NHT Classic 2's)
the Electro Harmonix 6CG7's tube's that I recently bought in my tube rolling endeavor (too sibilant), and the Marantz SA8001 SACDP that I sold.


Hello BR,
What a great question! For me, I'm still new in this hobby, so have not had any major disappointments. Even things, that I've bought and have not worked out, I've learned a lot from it. But, I guess in retrospect, the first Denon HTIB with a 5.1 Boston Acoustics miniature speaker set and sub-woofer. I spent $400 on it and never really used the speakers and sub-woofer. It was then I decided to try buying more used stuff.

Best Regards,
Stan

Tarheel_
04-20-2010, 06:12 AM
Worst purchase:

A god-awful sounding Pioneer 1018thx receiver (think i got the model right). I purchased this online and it sounded terrible. I listed a long thread about this on this site and nothing or any advise could help.

Luckily, i was able to sell it used on audiogon and only lost a few dollars.

nightflier
04-20-2010, 09:15 AM
-Marantz 8001.
-PS Audio HCA-2
-MMG with modified crossover.
One of the speakers arrived damaged, but I could still very much tell how the speakers sound. Perhaps my expectation and personal taste was way off.

jrhymeammo, the HCA-2 isn't exactly a bright-sounding amp, so with the 8001, which I would also consider on the warm side, I can understand the dissapointment. Or was your experience with these in separate systems? Can you elaborate on what you didn't like?

Feanor
04-20-2010, 09:53 AM
There were two equally awful components the head my list -- the tradjedy is that I lived with both for over 20 years before I fully understood just how bad they were.

Phase Linear 400 amplfier, (original model). Exceedingly "solid state" sounding, painfully harsh treble, opaque with limited resolution.
B&W DM7 speakers. Typically "British" speaker of that time: recessed mid-range and incredibly limited microdynamics (i.e. PRaT).

E-Stat
04-20-2010, 03:15 PM
So what was your most dissapointing purchase for your system?
The AR Integrated amp back in '72. I confess that I purchased it on looks and good reviews by the mediocre reviewers at the time. It sounded reasonably good driving Advents, but only at high levels. At lower levels, resolution disappeared. How could that be? This was a good learning experience for me at age 15 in that I realized early on that Julian Hirsch was deaf and that distortion figures are useless in determining real world performance. I even had the distortion measured and confirmed by Dave O'Brien himself at a McIntosh clinic and was handed the official results. What a joke!

Second in line was a Crown D-150 amp...

rw

squeegy200
04-20-2010, 07:22 PM
My most disappointing purchase was a Denon AVD 2000 Digital Multi-channel processor.
I happened to have three 2CH amplifiers, a center channel speaker, and a powered subwoofer so I thought I would take the plunge into multi-channel audio/video.

With great anticipation, I promptly went to the store and bought multi-channel DVDs and Music Videos hoping to experience the multi-channel surround sound that seemed so popular. I compared models and discovered this one had such favorable reviews.

I was very familiar with the soundstage and detail that my current speakers and amps were capable of producing. SO it was with high anticipation that I extend these very same speakers into multi-channel nirvana. If two was good, then five would be better. No?

I was sorely disappointed in how the digital processor took the high fidelity out of my digital sources and my speakers were reduced to singular flat planes. The once pleasing sound stage was replaced with 2-dimensional music emanating from five distinct points in the room.

I made a valiant attempt to reconcile my expectations but after several months of tweeking, I just could not endure the clinical presentation of the Digital processor. I converted back to analog and sold the processor on eBay.

Worf101
04-21-2010, 04:25 AM
It's not exactly "audio" but my first DVD player was a Pioneer progessive scan POS that died 4 months in and caused me to spend the next 8 months in Pioneer Service Hell. It was a pile of crap that should never have been sold the only thing worse was Pioneer's non-existant customer service department. I finally got a refund after siccing the California Attorney General and Better Business Bureau on them. The of course have never received another penny from me since.

Worf

scrivens
04-21-2010, 06:54 AM
Phillips CDR775...just coz Phillips invent 'em, don't mean they work right...should have got the Marantz (how phillips is supposed to be)

Ajani
04-21-2010, 09:31 AM
Phillips CDR775...just coz Phillips invent 'em, don't mean they work right...should have got the Marantz (how phillips is supposed to be)

I totally forgot about my Philips CDR... It's the only device I ever returned for a full refund... total POS!!!! It only worked (occasionaly) with a few specific CD brands... I replaced it with a TDK CDR which worked with anything I could throw at it...

LeRoy
04-21-2010, 03:16 PM
The NAD 545 CDP simply sounds so drab even though it looks pretty cool in comparison to past NAD products. After about 5 months of ownership the 545 simply started skipping to the next track while playing. I sent it back to the dealer who was able to arrange for a new replacement unit...once I got the new unit I checked to make sure it was working I then gave it as a present to #1 Nephew.

I replaced the 545 with the Musical Fidelity XRAY.

RoyY51
04-21-2010, 05:37 PM
I've had three:

An Onkyo receiver, model something, something, something. Sterile, mechanical sound that made my normally robust MA B2's sound like Bose.

A Nad T762 receiver. More quality control issues than I care to enumerate. After sending it back for warrantied repairs TWICE, I traded up to the T763 and have had no problems since.

My wife. When I married her, I thought she was into music. Turned out, she was into musicians.

Damned good thing she can cook.

jrhymeammo
04-22-2010, 05:21 PM
jrhymeammo, the HCA-2 isn't exactly a bright-sounding amp, so with the 8001, which I would also consider on the warm side, I can understand the dissapointment. Or was your experience with these in separate systems? Can you elaborate on what you didn't like?

Hey NF,

My experience with HCA-2 was only about 6 months. HCA2 was paired with BAT VK3i and a CDP with volume control. HCA2 with BAT sounded a bit dark and muffled. From my brief experience with the amp, I could tell why some people associate the sound with tube amps. The boby sounded a bit soft and was forgiving, but it didn't have the quality of tubes on edges of sound. To me, it sounded restrained. Same for the SA8001, I still have the player and I've been thinking about replacing it for long long time, but I haven't been focusing on my digital front end. Both units are forgiving, but do not offer open sound.

the hand of boredom
04-22-2010, 05:29 PM
A short while back you posted on options for the sub... did you get one?

dexxas
04-23-2010, 09:17 AM
Kef Cresta 3 loudspeakers.

thought they were awful for a couple of years. Then i changed my Amp and the sky engineer said they need driving have you tried, turning them up in volume?

By goodness Gracious me what a difference. Trouble is we in a flat and We can not listen to music that loud.

dexxas
04-24-2010, 07:37 AM
Only two HiFi products I've bought have dissapointed me:

NAD C352 Integrated Amp - Boring sound with my Mission Speakers at the time, boring looks and a pain in the @$$ remote volume control...

&

NAD C521BEE CD Player - I didn't find the sound to be a substantial upgrade from my sub $100 Panasonic DVD player or my mac mini.... Plus it had all manner of issues reading discs (that my old Technics CD player never did)... and of course it looked equally boring to match the C352 amp....


Im so Glad You wrote this. I honestly thought it was only me who felt this way about the Nad. I had The 340 amp I bought it from Richer sounds because it had such a high acclaim From what hi fi Thought well!!!! got to be good... It was at first but that's physiological Because You have to justify in your mind abound spending 250 quid. So no matter if its not great your going to kid yourself over and over for a while it is.

Yes i agree i thought the sound was dry unexciting i went from there To a Musical Fidelity x-80 what an amp for bass neighbours hated it.. :) I now got a Yamaha Ax 396 which im more than happy with and a Rotel Ra 810 a which is not well at the moment its owner um .. well touched metal while fiddling with the speaker wire I'm hoping to god it has an in line fuse and that's whats gone on the left hand channel