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
let me add that what is bad and what is good is difficult to define objectively. aesthetics is essentially a philosophical endeavor.
And this philosophical endeavor is a great way to escape the reality of good and bad.
Every piece of equipment I have bought in the last ten years, a friend of mine doesn't like. Although everything I own costs probably 2-3 times the stuff he has, he still doesn't like it. B&W, PSB & NAD is all he wants to hear, and those are brands I just won't buy.