Hi-Fi Products that totally underwhelmed you
Discussion
Deranged Rover said:
But the king of them all has to be:
- The original Audiolab 8000A amplifier. Life just doesn't seem worth living any more when listening to this dreary, grey miserable sounding device.
100% agree with this. I had one in the 80's and was totally underwhelmed with it - dull and lifeless sounding. After about six months I sold it and bought an original Denon PMA720 amplifier. Far better than the Audiolab in every respect. I still have it somewhere!- The original Audiolab 8000A amplifier. Life just doesn't seem worth living any more when listening to this dreary, grey miserable sounding device.
Cambridge Audio A500 - dull, boring, lifeless amp. My first foray into hifi had me nearly quitting before I even started!
Most headphone amplifiers - they do a job, but I just sold one in favour of using the headphone jack on my NAD amp. There was precious little difference. I’ve had a fair few headphones amps and nearly all were the same. With a few exceptions, headphones generally aren’t massively demanding/power hungry.
Sennheiser HD650 headphones - I just found them a bit dull, dare I say it. Their smaller brothers, the HD600 are actually better.
Sony MDR-CD3000 headphones - Very expensive, very comfortable, rather crap sounding.
Pretty much any high-end hifi system - for me these are purely just for status/bragging rights. They without question sound really excellent, but then so does a properly set up mid-fi system - for me they are a few percent apart for an enormous jump up in cost.
Most headphone amplifiers - they do a job, but I just sold one in favour of using the headphone jack on my NAD amp. There was precious little difference. I’ve had a fair few headphones amps and nearly all were the same. With a few exceptions, headphones generally aren’t massively demanding/power hungry.
Sennheiser HD650 headphones - I just found them a bit dull, dare I say it. Their smaller brothers, the HD600 are actually better.
Sony MDR-CD3000 headphones - Very expensive, very comfortable, rather crap sounding.
Pretty much any high-end hifi system - for me these are purely just for status/bragging rights. They without question sound really excellent, but then so does a properly set up mid-fi system - for me they are a few percent apart for an enormous jump up in cost.
te.
toasty said:
techiedave said:
Hall of Shame moment
Not a great expense but I did once get one of those green pens and ring the outside of some CD's
I did all of my CDs with a permanent marker. I could've sworn it did make a difference. Not a great expense but I did once get one of those green pens and ring the outside of some CD's
Circa 2003 during the "Great" CD ripping event, I ripped all my CD's (then about 200+) at 128kbps and then also Circa 2003 during the even "Greater" CD ripping event ripped them again at 320kbps because 128 sounded "Carp", yes carp the best way to mis-spell crap.
It was so, so boring doing it once, but doing it again even more painstakingly slowly was tricky. As opposed to now where an album takes about five minutes to rip, even on my basic laptop, back then on a slower, although fast for the time PC it took 15-20 minutes per cd!
I've always wanted to convert my vinyl but cannot face doing so, it is easier to just buy the CD's (if they make them) if I really want to listen to them again.. The vinyl conversion would be as follows;
About 150 albums at say 50 minutes "real time" plus all the faffage of having to flip the record half way through and piss about with cueing up up and all that faff, say 10 minutes totalling 60 minutes per album.
so, 150 hours
= 6 days non stop at 24hrs a day or
= 75 days at two albums a day, but that I couldn't expect to do that, so
= 150 days
= 21 weeks
= 5 months
It is never going to happen.
.........2003, LOL
[edit] just realised that if the vinyl was ever done, then another half hour per album would be spent faffing about with MP3 tag/metadata boredom.
Edited by colin_p on Monday 17th September 12:18
colin_p said:
Circa 2003 during the "Great" CD ripping event,]
It is uncanny how some of my own experiences mirror yours. Mine was done over the Easter weekend of 2006. The reason I recall is that my wife and daughters both went away on a holiday weekend I couldn't go on as I was on standbye call that weekend. I started the rip but then realised that tagging them individually would be required. Back then we had flakey 0.5meg broadband at home.So I took them in in boxes to work and used the PC's there. I can't remember the number involved then but it would have been around 150 I think. Anyway job was jobbed and a portable hard drive filled.
toasty said:
techiedave said:
Hall of Shame moment
Not a great expense but I did once get one of those green pens and ring the outside of some CD's
I did all of my CDs with a permanent marker. I could've sworn it did make a difference. Not a great expense but I did once get one of those green pens and ring the outside of some CD's
I think it helped with late 80's/early 90's players that possibly didn't have great error correction / clocks
Thinking about things...
My "AMP" history is as follows;
1985 - Some Technics thing, still happily in use to this day setup in the garage with a DAB radio. Still very happy with it.
2000 - Some big brawny Yamaha AV reciever, still happiy in use to this day in the study along with all the other components (including the never used minidisc) stacked high, 80's style, a beautiful thing to behold. Still very happy with it.
2007 - Another VERY brawny Yamaha AV reciever (for added connectivity options), still happily in use to this day in the kids / gaming room.
2015 - Marantz NR1506 receiver bought for even more connectivty options, which it is excellent at. Full HDCP2.2 passthrough for Netflix and Amazon in glorious 4k. Internet radio, blutooth and network'able. A lovely bit of kit.
Thing is, it isn't very loud compared to the older stuff.... boo hoo. Those "working from home" days where you can blast it are just not the same.
It is therefore maybe time for yet another and I blame this thread!
My "AMP" history is as follows;
1985 - Some Technics thing, still happily in use to this day setup in the garage with a DAB radio. Still very happy with it.
2000 - Some big brawny Yamaha AV reciever, still happiy in use to this day in the study along with all the other components (including the never used minidisc) stacked high, 80's style, a beautiful thing to behold. Still very happy with it.
2007 - Another VERY brawny Yamaha AV reciever (for added connectivity options), still happily in use to this day in the kids / gaming room.
2015 - Marantz NR1506 receiver bought for even more connectivty options, which it is excellent at. Full HDCP2.2 passthrough for Netflix and Amazon in glorious 4k. Internet radio, blutooth and network'able. A lovely bit of kit.
Thing is, it isn't very loud compared to the older stuff.... boo hoo. Those "working from home" days where you can blast it are just not the same.
It is therefore maybe time for yet another and I blame this thread!
Project turntable. I bought a rather cool looking project from richer sounds only to discover that the power switch was a crap in line torpedo switch hanging off the back of it, and the platter seemed to be very cheap.and light. Sounded pretty crap too.
Dug my mother's old Akai direct drive out of the loft and that sounds much better.
Dug my mother's old Akai direct drive out of the loft and that sounds much better.
techiedave said:
I was genuinely surprised to read just now that mini disc launched in1992. I got into it in 1998 ish
I always thought DAT had been around a good few years longer. I only thought that as I looked into getting a portable one a DAT Walkman to use instead of a standard Walkman and that was around 1992ish. From memory it was a lot dearer tan the mini disc portable and was dearer than the eventual purchase price of both the mini disc portable and home based player/ recorder.
I think what happened ish that mini disc got a big push in 1997/ 1998 and that's when I got into it.
This article was the one that surprised me:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/s...
These were the 2 items I had or as near to them as memory served.
DAT was launched around 1989 by Sony. A very expensive system and always aimed at pro market. Having worked on a good few machines they are a complete pain in the butt. Its just a very small video recorder mechanism. huge playback issues between machines if the tracking was out. Sounds great when working well, true linear digital audio. I still own 2 machines and they work fine (most of the time). I always thought DAT had been around a good few years longer. I only thought that as I looked into getting a portable one a DAT Walkman to use instead of a standard Walkman and that was around 1992ish. From memory it was a lot dearer tan the mini disc portable and was dearer than the eventual purchase price of both the mini disc portable and home based player/ recorder.
I think what happened ish that mini disc got a big push in 1997/ 1998 and that's when I got into it.
This article was the one that surprised me:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/s...
These were the 2 items I had or as near to them as memory served.
Miniisc (non linear compressed audio ) wasn't as nice but more reliable and quicker at accessing tracks. Neither really took off domestically.
The company I worked for had about 8 Sony DATs (most ended up in a skip)
Have to disagree about the LP12.
May not have been the best in the world (everyone has a different opinion as everyone has different ears and brain) but back in 1981 it was orders of magnitude better than anything else that could be bought in Sheffield!
It really did make the hairs in the back of your neck stand up.
I still have the same deck all these years later, although it's a bit like Trigger's broom, the only thing original left on it is the platter.
Still sounds amazing with the right bit of vinyl, and that's the problem with vinyl, some is amazing like the anniversary Beatles box set. Some, like the Sabbath albums box set should be converted to rubbish bins and never listened to (although I suspect the stream and CD versions are equally like listening through mud)
May not have been the best in the world (everyone has a different opinion as everyone has different ears and brain) but back in 1981 it was orders of magnitude better than anything else that could be bought in Sheffield!
It really did make the hairs in the back of your neck stand up.
I still have the same deck all these years later, although it's a bit like Trigger's broom, the only thing original left on it is the platter.
Still sounds amazing with the right bit of vinyl, and that's the problem with vinyl, some is amazing like the anniversary Beatles box set. Some, like the Sabbath albums box set should be converted to rubbish bins and never listened to (although I suspect the stream and CD versions are equally like listening through mud)
keirik said:
Have to disagree about the LP12.
May not have been the best in the world (everyone has a different opinion as everyone has different ears and brain) but back in 1981 it was orders of magnitude better than anything else that could be bought in Sheffield!
It really did make the hairs in the back of your neck stand up.
If you'd popped all the way over to Chesterfield (Audio Scene) you could have had a Pink Triangle which in PT TOO form wiped the floor with the LP12, to my ears anyway.May not have been the best in the world (everyone has a different opinion as everyone has different ears and brain) but back in 1981 it was orders of magnitude better than anything else that could be bought in Sheffield!
It really did make the hairs in the back of your neck stand up.
I had mine playing into DNM amplifiers and Epos ES14 speakers, happy days...
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