What's the worst bit of hifi kit you have purchased

Tinman1952

Well-known member
So what's the worst piece of hifi kit you have ever purchased ?.
The worst hifi idea you ever had ?
I see what you did there….😁
Mine was a Cambridge Audio DAB tuner when they first came out. From memory it was over £200 and it sounded awful 😣 Constant high pitched ‘distortion’ from the compressed signal…it lasted less than a week!
 
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Mine for me was a pair of pmc 2023 great reviews that just didn’t live up the reviews at all for me. Didn’t fit in with my room at all.
 

AJM1981

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I would not say terrible but my first set of speakers were Tannoy M1's. They won prizes and people nowadays still love them as they get a 4.7 consumer score.

I really consider them the most average of average out of the box. If I would own them now I might have wanted to apply some heavier equalizing to them.
 
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A few years ago, some like @Al ears will probably remember, I purchased an Electrocompaniet PC-1 CD player. Technically it was fine: Good detail retrieval, bass was quite well defined and tonal qualities was no issue. However, after a couple of weeks of getting used to the sound, it was really boring. I persevered with it for another couple of weeks... it was dreadfully unexciting, yet I couldn't pin-point why. After about a month I boxed it back up and replaced my cheaper Arcam CD73, which sounded more involving.

It wasn't until last year when I purchased the Exposure, which was half the Electro price, I finally tumbled. The Electro had no worthwhile dynamics. By comparison, the Exposure is dynamically superior and had a overall sound that drew you into the music.
 
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Cyrus. It makes my ears bleed. Just not for me at all.
 

Friesiansam

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As far as hi-fi is concerned, I seem to have managed to avoid buying anything that qualifies as bad. On the other hand, the only gaming headset I ever bought, turned out to have all the durability of a wet slice of bread.
 

insider9

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The worst hifi component I bought was Cambridge A1 amp. The plain'est (is that a word?) level of amplification you can imagine, however it was also rather enjoyable and I didn't dislike it. But it lacked a lot of detail and other sound characteristics found in higher end amplification. For what it was and what I paid for it I'd still wouldn't mind recommending it as a spare/kitchen/garage amp.
 

Sliced Bread

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Mission 782, 78c, 780 package.
Looked beautiful, wonderful sound but every single mid driver had to be replaced at least once and some more than once. In the end Mission started send out a different mid driver made out of a different material so my 5 speaker package was running in different drivers.
Such a pain
 

Clarkey_71

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If you want to class it as a bit of kit, I would have to say a length of VDH speaker cable. Just flat and lifeless and took all the energy out of my music.
Others swear by it, but not for me.
Other than that, I've kind of always done ok.
Though thinking about it, I did get a bit excited about a Tricord diablo phono stage during a shop demo and bought one. I didn’t quite live up to it at home, so a lesson learnt there.
I'm generally reluctant to criticise kit too much, as there is rarely bad kit, but usually poor matching.
 
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Tinman1952

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If you want to class it as a bit of kit, I would have to say a length of VDH speaker cable. Just flat and lifeless and took all the energy out of my music.
Others swear by it, but not for me.
Other than that, I've kind of always done ok.
Though thinking about it, I did get a bit excited about a Tricord diablo phono stage during a shop demo and bought one. I didn’t quite live up to it at home, so a lesson learnt there.
I'm generally reluctant to criticise kit too much, as there is rarely bad kit, but usually poor matching.
I had some quite expensive VDH interconnects about 12 years ago. When I compared them to some Atlas Navigator interconnects, the VDH were about 30% quieter! No wonder they sounded ‘rolled off’……
 
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knaithrover

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Nov 24, 2013
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A Pure iPod dock which won rave reviews at the time and did sound prettg good however, the remote control for it used to inexplicably switch my tv on and off.... ridiculous

Most expensive was my Roksan Oxygene amp/cd combo which retailed at around £7k and the amp buzzed and sounded flat and deadly boring. The cdp was admittedly very very good when it wasn't randomly rejecting cd's.... Overpriced style over substance.
 

RoA

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Feb 11, 2021
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Audiolab 8000S and an Epos 'M' range standmount. I can't remember the exact model. I had them at different times ... not for long.

Other than that I was always quite lucky and have not owned anything that was truly awful.

My recent purchase of B&W Formation Duo"s, which I sold within a few months of owning them, were in many ways superb. I thought they would overcome my negative experiences with the B&W house sound but the stand out treble and overly warm bass, both of which did not gel with the other became ultimately too much. That and not enough DSP adjustability which limited practical application.

I preferred the Kef LS50 Meta Wireless (now also sold).

I have returned to Hegel and Quad (plus another couple of integrsteds) which let me enjoy music again.

Some speakers for my second system will be next.
 
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