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Is there any bad sounding high-end gear--?

I was reading the thread here today about biased reviewers-
it got me thinking, out of the stuff which is reviewed in the publications which serve the high-end arena, is there really any bad sounding gear?----I am talking about from what I call the golden era of High-end, 1990---2000, stuff from the major players like ARC, CJ, Krell, MLevinson, Jadis---etc-----I use this time frame as this was the pre-Chinese era when most gear was from the US, we also saw stuff from Italy, France and Swiss made stuff.

When I have purchased something and not liked it, I always struck it up to a system mismatch----

If anyone can provide what they bought and really thought it was terrible, I'd be interested to know what it was.
128x128justlisten
timrhu
2,778 posts
 
imo, most "high end" speakers arn't really all that great and some are bad.
6550c
Have to agree with this. In-store setup maybe the cause but some pretty expensive speakers have made me ask the sales person to please turn it down.
Magnepans demoed in my system sounded horrible.
maplegrovemusic's avatar
maplegrovemusic
981 posts
 
Yes , I am of modest means financially.I can only afford mid fi gear. I heard some $20,000 wilson speakers and $25,000 sonus fabre speakers at a audio boutique that i would not have paid $1500 for.price will not always get the experience one is looking for.
team212's avatar
team212
223 posts
 
Yep, Sure is especially in overpriced or underwhelming Speakers

Magicos,DeVores,Zu, Coincident,Nolas,Ushers.

That'll do for starters.

Des
inna
5,245 posts
 
Martin Logans can sound excellent in their own way though I prefer different sound. I am surprised you didn't say that Soundlabs are garbage and that Lamm or Rowland are full of distortion. There are different opinions, and there is plain nonsense.
tonykay
856 posts
 
As prices of products go up, so does your level of expectation of what you get for you money. Personally,
I think any speaker over 25K is overpriced regardless
of the performance (unless the voice coil is solid gold).
Hey, it's just a speaker! However if you listened to the
Wilson or Sonus Faber speakers and they sounded bad, it
was probably due to a mismatch with the room or the
equipment they were using as both sound about as good
as speakers can sound in their price range.
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