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Post by MartinT on Feb 27, 2024 8:35:52 GMT
Let's have a laugh at each others' misfortunes!
What terrible hi-fi choices have you made in the past?
For me, the very worst item of hi-fi I ever bought was a Helius Aureus pickup arm. It looked nice enough, but it suffered from stiction from day one. No matter how many times I adjusted its bearing it would end up too loose or it would stop half way across the record. It drove me mad, ending up with my selling the whole turntable - which was a shame as the Michell Syncro it was mounted on was rather nice. I think the Aureus was just a very poor design, doomed to be taken off the market in short order.
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Post by julesd68 on Feb 27, 2024 10:43:25 GMT
I'll go with the first thing that comes to mind, the Audioflab 8000A.
What an unmitigated cluster. I was seduced by a distant but vague nostalgia for the tidy aesthetics and feint memory of it sounding half decent. It didn't. When I tried it in the system it sounded so horrendously lifeless it was like giant wool socks had been placed over the speakers, so naturally I was convinced something was amiss. I drove to a 8000A "specialist" out near Aylesbury who spent an hour or so "servicing" it. Convinced of my good fortune I got the amp home, plugged it in but it still sounded as utterly fkd as before. I sold it within days to another poor soul. Here endeth the lesson...
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Post by MartinT on Feb 27, 2024 12:22:20 GMT
Another one from me: the PS Audio GCPH phono amp. It was based on the Gain Cell and I thought it sounded very promising and had had a good couple of reviews at the time. I ordered it from the US and it certainly looked like a nicely designed product. Unfortunately, it hummed. And hissed. Not the kind of hum caused by a grounding problem, it was the sort that occurred at normal listening volumes from the gain stage being set high enough for an MC cartridge. It hummed and hissed and buzzed annoyingly and I couldn't stand it for more than about a month before I got rid of it. It really should have been sold as an MM only design where it could have got away with a lower gain setting, but I think it was just too noisy a design.
I replaced it with a Whest and then later with an Aurorasound VIDA, both of which did not create any noise.
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Post by stellabagpuss on Feb 27, 2024 12:22:44 GMT
My turn... The ifi Zen Stream comes to mind, fantastic sound, terrible interface, buggy certainly not a one box solution.
The funny thing, your better of just using to render... I only wished l was aware of this then, but my knowledge base is better now.
At the time ... l was gutted.
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Post by John on Feb 27, 2024 14:50:46 GMT
Another one from me: the PS Audio GCPH phono amp. It was based on the Gain Cell and I thought it sounded very promising and had had a good couple of reviews at the time. I ordered it from the US and it certainly looked like a nicely designed product. Unfortunately, it hummed. And hissed. Not the kind of hum caused by a grounding problem, it was the sort that occurred at normal listening volumes from the gain stage being set high enough for an MC cartridge. It hummed and hissed and buzzed annoyingly and I couldn't stand it for more than about a month before I got rid of it. It really should have been sold as an MM only design where it could have got away with a lower gain setting, but I think it was just too noisy a design. I replaced it with a Whest and then later with an Aurorasound VIDA, both of which did not create any noise. I made the same mistake. Bloody awful phonostage. Thankfully the dealer took it back from me. I think I also got the Whest as used to get on with James. |
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Post by John on Feb 27, 2024 14:53:04 GMT
The Jamo Concert 8. Horrible treble that I could not tame and spent far to much trying to fix the issue, instead of changing the speakers.
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Post by John on Feb 27, 2024 14:55:52 GMT
My next speakers were not much better than the Jamo Concerts 8, this time a bit to tame. I give you the Wilson Bensch Actors.
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Post by John on Feb 27, 2024 14:59:31 GMT
I regret going down the bughead route. Yes it sounded good, but the process was just to complex and every week, the guy would upgrade between 1 to 4 times the process he was using. It just got in the way of enjoying music. I was listening to the changes rather than enjoying the music.
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Post by Slinger on Feb 27, 2024 15:13:59 GMT
A Harman Kardon HD 980 CD / MP3 Player, purchased new in 2011 for £198.99. It had a 32-bit DSP, a 24/176kHz " Sample Rate Converter", a Wolfson WM8740 DAC, and still managed to have the tonal qualities of fingernails on a blackboard. It was my first " big" system upgrade and it very nearly put me off upgrading my perfectly good system for life. It did have a nice (for the time) dot matrix display, and was at its best when that read "NO DISC". Not only that, but when I sold it on eBay the buyer tried to rip me off by telling me it had arrived scratched, and demanding a discount. I spent the next 2 weeks arguing with both him and eBay before he dropped the case (because he was a fekkin liar).  |
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Post by brettj on Feb 28, 2024 10:05:07 GMT
Last year I sold an SR Purple fuse.
Ended up chatting with a guy via emails.
Nice system.
Offered an SR Orange for him to try.
Upon receiving it, he ghosted me.
He and the Orange were never seen again.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 28, 2024 15:47:28 GMT
He and the Orange were never seen again. Well, that story didn't make me laugh at all  |
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Post by julesd68 on Feb 28, 2024 16:20:52 GMT
He and the Orange were never seen again. Well, that story didn't make me laugh at all Yes that's horrible. Thankfully those kind of people are few & far between in my hifi experience. |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 28, 2024 21:00:01 GMT
And so on to my final entry here, the one that hurt me and pissed me off the most. My Roksan Xerxes turntable with SME IV arm and AT OC9 cartridge. Well, what's wrong with that, you may ask? Nothing at all when it was new! The problem was, it suffered from a fatal design flaw. That long cut in the top plate caused it to be too weak to support the platter bearing and pickup arm, with the result that over 3-4 years the top plate sagged causing the whole thing to become impossible to align properly. It had become a very expensive boat anchor. To my utter disgust, Roksan refused to do anything about it such as repair or replace it free of charge. Their solution? They ditched it and released a brand new design leaving us Xerxes owners high and dry.
I resolved never to touch anything made by Roksan ever again.
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Post by stellabagpuss on Feb 28, 2024 21:34:18 GMT
And so on to my final entry here, the one that hurt me and pissed me off the most. My Roksan Xerxes turntable with SME IV arm and AT OC9 cartridge. Well, what's wrong with that, you may ask? Nothing at all when it was new! The problem was, it suffered from a fatal design flaw. That long cut in the top plate caused it to be too weak to support the platter bearing and pickup arm, with the result that over 3-4 years the top plate sagged causing the whole thing to become impossible to align properly. It had become a very expensive boat anchor. To my utter disgust, Roksan refused to do anything about it such as repair or replace it free of charge. Their solution? They ditched it and released a brand new design leaving us Xerxes owners high and dry. I resolved never to touch anything made by Roksan ever again. That's shocking Martin, how to kill the customer... Now if they had offered you a big reduction on a new product as a trade in, they may have kept you as a customer.. Talk about winning the battle, but loosing the war. |
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Post by ant on Feb 28, 2024 22:06:50 GMT
And so on to my final entry here, the one that hurt me and pissed me off the most. My Roksan Xerxes turntable with SME IV arm and AT OC9 cartridge. Well, what's wrong with that, you may ask? Nothing at all when it was new! The problem was, it suffered from a fatal design flaw. That long cut in the top plate caused it to be too weak to support the platter bearing and pickup arm, with the result that over 3-4 years the top plate sagged causing the whole thing to become impossible to align properly. It had become a very expensive boat anchor. To my utter disgust, Roksan refused to do anything about it such as repair or replace it free of charge. Their solution? They ditched it and released a brand new design leaving us Xerxes owners high and dry. I resolved never to touch anything made by Roksan ever again. I just pinned the cutout on mine. A pair of rods in holes drilled horizontally through the side of the top plate while it was clamped down flat onto a granite chopping board, so the cutout and the rest were aligned correctly. Didnt sound any different. All the cutout does is alter the resonant frequency of the top plate, it doesnt isolate anything. Bridging the cutout in my experience does not alter the resonance significantly. I got hold of a replacement non bent top plate, swapped them, and was mildly purturbed when i couldnt tell any significant difference. There probably is some but i couldnt really tell. The original power supply however is a bloody disaster |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 28, 2024 22:29:48 GMT
Yes, I had that original power supply.
Frankly, their build quality was shite.
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Post by rockontommy on Feb 29, 2024 8:48:30 GMT
My worst upgrade was a house!
My first house was small a modern terraced house, with a mostly open plan downstairs and a solid concrete floor. System at the time was a Quad 34/FM4/405II with an Arcam alpha plus cd player, Linn axis/K9 and TDL RTL3 speakers.
System had a nice effortless quallity with decent imaging, and deep tight bass. Lovely!
Due to a change of jobs I moved to a much bigger new build house, with a much bigger room. Unfortunatley, due to the flimsy nature of the partition walls the sound was a disaster, with overblown mushy bass. Opening / closing doors, changing curtains, room layout - nothing tamed the monster bass . In the end I replaced the RTL3s with some IPL M3TLs which helped to an extent, but the system was never the same.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 29, 2024 9:31:57 GMT
My worst upgrade was a house! My previous house was a new build and featured some kind of air gap under the concrete floor. The result was horribly boomy bass which, of course, my Ushers could push out with ease and I didn't at the time have them on Podiums. What a disaster! |
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Post by julesd68 on Feb 29, 2024 10:49:18 GMT
Lest I forget, the Rega RS1 standmount speaker.
Bright and breezy? Er, maybe, but thin and lightweight in presentation wouldn't begin to do this boxy little marvel justice. Bass deprived, it's like listening to your gran's old AM radio.
One of the quickest "demos" in my system ever. Thankfully there is a large secondhand market for Rega so a speedy resale was a breeze.
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Post by MikeMusic on Mar 14, 2024 17:01:24 GMT
My worst upgrade was a house! My first house was small a modern terraced house, with a mostly open plan downstairs and a solid concrete floor. System at the time was a Quad 34/FM4/405II with an Arcam alpha plus cd player, Linn axis/K9 and TDL RTL3 speakers. System had a nice effortless quallity with decent imaging, and deep tight bass. Lovely! Due to a change of jobs I moved to a much bigger new build house, with a much bigger room. Unfortunatley, due to the flimsy nature of the partition walls the sound was a disaster, with overblown mushy bass. Opening / closing doors, changing curtains, room layout - nothing tamed the monster bass . In the end I replaced the RTL3s with some IPL M3TLs which helped to an extent, but the system was never the same. We moved to this house in 2003 Sound quality in previous, a huge 30 foot square room, high ceiling had been fabulous The sound was awful here, 1953 build house room about 15 feet by 20 I tried (almost) all sorts Managed to grab some Linn Saras on Ebay as the bass from the Isobariks was just wrong Before I swapped them over we had an electrical problem and needed Bob my favourite sparky in to fix it. While he was here I asked him to put a bank of unswitched sockets in for the system Stunning improvement to cheapo 4 way adaptors - why hadn't I realised that ?! Also asked him to look at the wobbly stake in the ground with about one strand of earth cable attached (Might have also been a new stake) Sound improved again. Not surprisingly he pointed out is was dangerous... The other problem Moving from a big bungalow to a 2 storey house I really do prefer living on one floor, not sure why |
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