Topic: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only) (Read 30450 times)

Marvey · « **Reply #10 on:** November 21, 2014, 08:10:28 PM »

Quote from: dreamwhisper on November 21, 2014, 07:27:18 PM

The Sonic Frontiers SFD2 Mk2 was thick and blurry, couldn't listen to it on headphones.
Sounded like the best DAC I've ever heard on speakers. Best sounding speaker set-up to this day in fact.

Was that the same DAC unit? I know tubes can make a difference. Another more likely issue might have been the input impedance of the pre-amp or head-amp. The SFD-1 I have barfed into an headamp which I think had a 10k pot or something like that. The SFD outputs are cap coupled and the caps may have been too small for effective transference of bass signals.

Tari · « **Reply #11 on:** November 21, 2014, 08:15:26 PM »

Quote from: marvey on November 21, 2014, 08:04:41 PM

Tari, you've been holding out on us. You never told me you owned the Deviant stuff. Didn't I warn peeps? Or was it already too late.

I think you said the rig sounded like being in a bathroom. Don't remember if that was before or after I bought it. Its rep is great though so it sold in a day.

Mr.Sneis · « **Reply #12 on:** November 21, 2014, 08:27:36 PM »

Sony earbuds ex71sl or somethingrather

- Sounded so bad it pushed me into the hobby really

Beyerdynamic T1

-To this day I do not understand why people like this headphone.

AKG K240 Studio

-Yuuuuuuck

Ps Audio Nuwave dac

- Huge disappointment

Stax Omega II mk 2

- Maybe it was the straight out of the box and unadjusted fit, but they sounded nothing like I would expect in the company of a mk1 and a 009

Sorrodje · « **Reply #13 on:** November 21, 2014, 08:37:34 PM »

- SHure SRH1840 .. awful. I hated this headphone the first second when I tried it at a meet. it's beyond all reason . I hate that . Honky as hell. I can only hear those shitty mids and nothing else around.
- Geek out 450 ( old FW I guess ? ) tried it with my SE535. exploded my ears , reduced the volume and heard Shrkkshrrrrkk shitty noise. sent back immediately.
- Beyerdynamic T70p. I can almost bear a DT880 or a T1 but T70p can rejoin the SRH1840 in my personal dustbin. kind of mix of a broken twitter and a kid who plays with foil paper
- Beats solo the first . Can't understand how it's possible to seriously send that crap.
- Sony XB5/700. Headphone for hydrocephalus I guess ?
- Hegel HD10 DAC. not bad but very bad association (harsh, harsh and ... harsh ? ) with my HD800. one of the worst period for me since i'm in audio business. Each time I turned on my rig, I was afraid to listen to music. a nightmare.

Ok I gave 6 examples. but I really need to exorcise them for my own safety.

DaveBSC · « **Reply #14 on:** November 21, 2014, 08:49:37 PM »

Starting at the top of the price scale:

I've yet to hear a JM/Focal I've particularly liked, but this Grande Utopia Be (then $90K) was just an epic failure. I heard it in a dealer showroom with all ARC Reference amps and source components. It sounded like somebody fired a reverse shrink ray at an average $2K speaker. I've not heard the current split cabinet EM version that is now something like $140K+

Wilson Maxx at the same dealer driven by Krell FPB amps. I'm not sure which was the bigger contributing factor, but the results were horrible. Bright, thin, sterile. Sonic bleach. Yech.

Magico Mini/II. These were Magico's first commercial products, and were $20K+. Total lack of coherency, super bright, edgy, unpleasant.

PS Audio GCC-100. This was supposed to be the best sounding version of the GCC integrated amps. I hate to imagine how bad the GCC-250 and 500 were. ICEpower sound at its worst. I don't know what magic the Gaincell was supposed to have, but I didn't hear any of it.

From the people completely incapable of integrating an electrostatic panel with a woofer comes the world's worst high-end subwoofer.

Marvey · « **Reply #15 on:** November 21, 2014, 09:02:32 PM »

MYTEK DIGITAL STEREO192-DSD DAC

Luis immediately sensed the glare of death within two seconds after I played music from it. USB was used. The DAC was used and left on for two days before evaluation. Perhaps we needed 400 hours.I looked at Luis and his eyes beamed "really dude, please stop torturing me". I replied "No no no, just give it chance. I want to make sure." Luis squirmed on the coach for 60 more seconds until I decided to end his pain.

Glare is the exact word. The night before, I had turned down the volume of my speaker system for background music. Sitting in the dining room, I could still hear the glare in the background. Gahhhhhhh! That's just so wrong.

SHURE SRH1440

Using words to describe this headphone does not do it justice. Instead, I submit these exhibits:
Upper midrange (and treble) galore.

Distortion galore. The good thing about the massive distortion in the bass and lower midrange it that is sounds a bit warmer than the FR would indicate. Not much. I'm not sure that's a good thing either.

RSA DARKSTAR

I have nothing against Ray, and I'm trying not to call stuff out as pieces of shit because doing so is just unwarranted; but this was a colossal piece of shit. Flat. Boring. Veiled. Constipated. It sounded like six op-amps at unity gain chained to each other. It does look cool though.

MERIDIAN EXPLORER

See what Tari wrote about it. I won't hold back on this one. Meridian are a bunch of boneheads for initially releasing this product with an output impedance of 45 ohms. This goes to show how Meridian wanted in on a market that they had no understanding about. When I first heard it, I thought it was broken, or perhaps that Meridian wanted to hammer it to their house sound. I wasn't surprised when I measured 45 ohms output Z. No one at HF believed me. Until Tyll confirmed my findings.

LEBEN CS-300X

This is another piece of shit. Based on how it was described to me, I thought the Leben would sound warm and lush like a WA5, Decware, ZD, etc. A colored amp with nice bloom capable of sending to me the astral plane. But noooo. N ever have I heard bass rendered so poorly. Slow, syrupy, bloated, muddy. I'm not even sure if there was even any treble either.

Already mentioned by others:

Sony PHA-1: Dead and boring. amp section destroys all sound coming into it.
Sennheiser HD700: Painful at worst. Strange bass at best. Sennheiser's attempt to make a Grado.
Ultrasone ED8: I am so glad that I did not listen to people at HF.

Other stuff:

Voxactiv Ampeggio (the wide baffle one): Lets make the naturally rising response of the driver even worse with baffles!
Ayon GyrFalcon: Let's make a really bad speaker with the most expensive drivers around. Let's watch the drivers flop around in pain.
Sonus Faber Stradivari: Ahhhhh! Run away. Run away. It's the bass monster! Even JA of Stereophile commented: "... have always featured complex behavior in the lower region of the audioband, and the Stradivari is no exception." Yeah, "complex".

Marvey · « **Reply #16 on:** November 21, 2014, 09:25:55 PM »

Quote from: GoldfishX on November 21, 2014, 07:23:51 PM

Violectric V200 - Bought this amp to help deal with the HD800's brightness. I found it dull, smeared and closed in. Tried to live with it for 3 months, then sold it. Definitely not a Violectric fan after that.

Burson Conductor - It was doing good (not great) until the driver installed spyware on my computer. That kind of puts a negative bias on how Burson products sound after that. This was another Cable Company loan.

So I feel good I haven't gotten burned on that many actual purchases so far. I'm having trouble coming up with a 5th, so I'll leave it there.

You are fairly new here, but I think it's interesting you mention those two. I don't think those two amps are horrible; but they are certainly very overrated, especially over on HF. The V200 is exactly how you describe it. In a strange way, a good match, or should I say compatible with the HD800's peculiarities. But it also kills a lot of what the HD800 is capable of.

I didn't know about the spyware crap with Burson. The Burson was kind of wobbly and lacked control.

GoldfishX · « **Reply #17 on:** November 21, 2014, 09:37:25 PM »

Longtime lurker here, longtime Head-Fier, have yet to take the plunge past mid-fi.

I tend to agree with your assertions that Head-Fi has gotten over-commercial and people get over-defensive there when you say mean things about their toys. I think you helped explain to me why the Gungnir and HD800 don't pair so well over there (I sold the Gungnir, but I didn't want to list it because I attribute the aggressive sound to the pairing).

I knew the reputation of the V200, but it had a weird effect on the music...like all the tonal colors went to a very well-defined black and white. I literally thought something was wrong with my ears. And again, smeared details on an HD800 isn't fun.

DaveBSC · « **Reply #18 on:** November 21, 2014, 09:51:46 PM »

Can you elaborate on what exactly the spyware was? That doesn't make sense to me, it's not like Sony and the CD rootkit where there's an obvious motive.

Solderdude · « **Reply #19 on:** November 21, 2014, 09:53:38 PM »

Ultrasone headphones ...
At least 5 of them.

Piercing, raw and boomy

Author Topic: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only) (Read 30450 times)

Marvey

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Tari

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Mr.Sneis

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Sorrodje

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

DaveBSC

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Marvey

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Marvey

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

GoldfishX

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

DaveBSC

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

Solderdude

Re: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only)

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Author Topic: Five Worst Pieces of Audio Gear You've Heard (Members Only) (Read 30450 times)