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The Worst Products I've Owned - A Glimpse in to an audiophile's nightmare purchases
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2024
- Watch Adrian rant and rave...well...just rant, about the worst products he has owned. journey in the mind of an audiophile as he makes a victim statement about the worst products he has owned.
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Audio Excellence Inc. is a high-end audio/video store in Markham, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto. We've been in business since 1991.
Check out our interviews with designers and audio luminaries like Daryl Wilson of Wilson Audio, Paul McGowan of PS Audio, Paolo Tezzon of Sonus Faber, Wendell Diller of Magnepan, John Atkinson of Stereophile, Dan D'Agostino of D'Agostino Master Audio Systems, Nelson Pass of Pass Labs and others.
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Edited by: Mike@audioexcellence.ca
Whoever complained about the eye contact, they live in their own bubbles.
Hopefully everyone comments about that.
What kind of judgemental mind can complain that...
It's a camera anyway. Not a human to human contact. For sure
Love your content. Keep it up. There is always someone with an axe to grind.
Who cares if he doesn’t make eye contact in the camera. I like watching this man. He’s terrific. I don’t live Canada so I’ll probably never buy anything from him.
You come across as one the most friendly and credible audio geeks on TH-cam.
When I was in college (back in the 80's) the inside joke among salesmen at all the local AV shops was Bose stands for "Buying Other Speakers Eventually" because they all knew how awful they really sounded despite selling them in droves to suckers who'd been brainwashed by their slick advertising...😂
buy anothers sound equipment
@@matldn2697Base
The eye contact thing is nonsense….
Love your channel and your honesty and passion 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Can't wait for part 2!!
100% agree on the Bose 901s. I had a pair my freshman year of college and quickly got rid of them and went with stacked Advents!
I knew them inside and out for professional reasons, and they were crap.
I’m not a Bose hater, but it’s hard to find redeeming qualities on something that was wrong from the beginning.
sound everywhere, stereo nowhere. lol
BOSE = B uy O ther S ound E quipment
There's a reason for the canard "No highs, no lows, must be Bose."
I’ve had Bose drivers in two different Chevy Tahoes and they sounded really good. It’s better than the B&O system in a Ford I have. Their headphones can be good but I’ve never liked their loudspeakers.
The BOSE 901 used very cheap drivers sourced from Auratone, and from memory USD4.95/each. That is one reason why they sounded so bad, even with the in-line electronic equalizer sold with every pair.
Back in the late 80's and early 90's I worked for Dow Stereo in San Diego. We sold the 901's. Nobody bought them because they were so bad. All of us salesmen hated them. My favorite that we sold were the Infinity Kappa 8's. Incredible speakers.
I own some very nicely renovated Kappa 8s they're magnificent 🇦🇺👌
and that is why no one should watch the channel of someone who bought them in the 1980s.
And he hates the ESL-57. I had a friend that owned them mated to custom tube electronics and placed in a small bedroom. Even the turntable was custom with an air bearing platter and Eminent Technology linear tracking tone arm. Awesome sound you can't buy retail.
Which Dow did you work at?
El Cajon BLVD
Highly entertaining stories again Adrian. Looking forward to part 2!
I heard the 24" Hartley on Quads and it did not disappoint. Quads are so fickle they don't even like humidity fluctuations hour to hour. But still worth the fussiness and rebuilds every five years
So good that finally someone is willing to talk about products that do not go well! People could learn a lot from that (what could go wrong with the products etc etc-), I wish more reviewers would be open to discuss products with this honesty! thumb up!
In 1970 I bought a pair of original Bose 901s and enjoyed them for several years. Then they got boxed up and put in storage. In the 1990s I took them out and didn't like them anymore. Being an engineer I decided to see what I could do to improve them. My first attempt was admittedly half hearted and failed. About 20 years ago I made a much more serious attempt. It took about 4 weeks to fix the two problems with the bass. It took 4 years to fix the treble. Before you can fix something you have to figure out what's wrong with it. It turned into an excellent speaker. Starting g with Series III there was a radical design change which IMO was a downgrade.
I listened to it for quite a few years but haven't for 6 years. I invented my own sound system that is radically different and that's all I listen to. Two years ago I returned that system and wouldn't change a thing. It's now my Idea of perfection.
Love these videos. My worse sounding piece of equipment was the Aragon 8008 of 7-8 years ago. I replaced it with the Mcintosh MC402. I posted the Aragon for sale, the buyer came over and listen to it; he was ok with the sound but then he asked me if I would plug in the Mac amp for comparison. He almost walked away from buying it, I had to explain that there was a significant difference in cost too.
That's funny.
That's the problem when you are selling and have other equipment around. I usually discourage them from even asking a test with the price issue.
The Aragon is a bright sounding amp and needs to be matched up carefully. I have a friend who installed the 3 channel Aragon amp into his Martin Logan Sequel2 with silver interconnects and it was unlistenable due to the highs being so shrill! The amp sounded okay on a regular speaker (I forgot what brand and model) but it was a bad match to his system.
Too funny. The Carver Amazing speakers in your picture were mine. They were horrible. That picture was in a friend's garage in the middle of winter in Alberta after they just died
lol what a small world
I wouldn't worry about or even explain the eye contact bs. Most people are uncomfortable looking into a camera lens.
when I speak usually I look to away to think about what I'm saying; looking at someone square in the eye, can be distracting to the thought process. it doesn't mean being deceitful generally. now when asked a direct question that feels like it IS questioning my veracity I will look (call it a cold cold stare) directly in the eye with no doubt about my intentions.
I have trouble with keeping eye contact. For me it's very intense an normally I look away after a second. Maybe a autistic trait or something like that. Aside of that I am reasonably normal XD.
Ahhh The Quads. My father had a pretty good stereo setup back in the 70s Marantz, Thorens, Kef. However, he had a friend that owned Quads. It was the first time something moved in me when I listened to recorded music. Once you hear them you can't get them out of your head!
My love/hate was the NAD 3140 integrated. It was a great budget amplifier I purchased from Ring Audio when I was a university student living in Toronto in the 80s. When it worked it was a smart option for good listening on a budget, but I had it in various shops far too often, mostly a channel dropping out for whatever reason. The same happened much later with a used British Fidelity A-1 that was gob smacking at times, but also highly unreliable. I sold it to a friend who later found the same issues. I warned him about the issues and we're still friends. He eventually sold it as well.
Interesting commentary and video. Back in the day, this was the best era of a what is now vintage audio excellence. And I've seen these "rejects" in stereo stores and in stereo audiophile magazines. A lot of this is personal trial and error once hooked-up at home on your own sound system unless there's a listening room with multiple sets of speakers you can select before purchase. It is then can you discern what was pleasing to your ears and if a wise purchase. Most of these vintage speakers are high-end for the most discriminating tastes. And unaffordable to the masses in 70s-80s dollars. What was unaffordable back then, can now be purchased used at a fraction on resale websites such as eBay and FB Marketplace. Me....I'm happy with a pair of vintage Advent Heritage or Boston Acoustics T1030s at just a few hundred bucks if even that. Thank you for an interesting insight on your past audiophile purchases. Keep-up the great work.
It would be awesome if you give us a tour of your collection.
..the 901s are an icon for awful..that’s a slam dunk
Great video. Your memories explaining the different issues was interesting and because you worded the deficiencies in easy to understand language, I could feel your frustrations relived. Thank you.
I love this type of video. The honesty is unusual and refreshing.
Klipssh La cala speakers - power them up and they blow up - They were huge and had no quality at all. I also had a pair of speakers that mounted on a wall about 4" deep 2'x4' something like that, can't remember the name all mids base fell off as soon as you moved away from in front of them. 80's lots of bad stuff. I blew up Bryston amps (2) a Sansui 300 watt amp lasted a year.
Bose: Buy Other Sound Equipment. My uncle had the 901 with it's eq....8 and 2 4inch speakers... Doesn't work. Simple as that... Eq or not... 😉
Who ever made that comment is a total paranoid freak. Your sense of humor and explanation was pure class! As we both know there are many paranoid folks out there.
Mickey Mantle once said about Billy Martin (both baseball players) that Martin was so paranoid that he could HEAR someone give him the finger.
I started audio with Heathkit then to Dynaco. 1st good speakers were Dyna A-25's. Bose had just been introduced (1970) My dealer had Phase Linear amps to power his show room. Bose rocked the place thru there EQ. A-25's sounded amazing with that horse power. Wilson audio is down the road and Zu Audio is up the road. Out of college I performed visual art concerts using early Bose turned with 8 speakers to audience and Crown DC300 providing the power. Filled an auditorium with sound well. Teac reel to reel was soundtrack.
Another great video sir. While I was on a business trip my wife was in the mall, walked into tha Bose Store & purchased that 901 garbage. When I finally got home she surprised me all right. Not only didn't she know what she was buying but she swallowed the salesmans line of BS hook line & sinker. After trying to tolerate them for 6 months I couldn't take it anymore. Took them out in the backyard & chopped them up with an axe & in the garbage they went. Needless to say my wife never went behind my back to purchase high-end items without my ok.
LOL! No THAT'S a story worth telling
@@adrianlow2114 Hello Adrian: Thank you for your most kind words 😊. Have a great weekend 😀. TMP from N.J.
There's a story that never happened.
@@erwinvanhulten9561Why - because he's alive to tell about it? Perhaps he found his wife in the east. It's a big world out there.
Regarding Bose 901, I did a service job on a pair series 3, and I cannot believe how poorly they were put together, basic plastic and miss placed glue. Has one feature I like they are very good for background music.😂
I worked in sales at a high-end store that sold Bose along with other brands. The only time we sold Bose products was when customers came in with their minds made up and did not want to do comparison listening. We only sold one pair of 901s in the years I worked there since, for the same price, one could buy much better-sounding speakers.
Did I notice a "901" in the thumbnail
I had the very same experience with Bose 901s'. I even had the stands ,EQ, plenty of power on hand and they were terrible. I tried and tried to convince myself I'd made a smart choice...lost them in a divorce. Best thing ever!
What...the divorce or ...😂
@@theonl1128 BOTH! haha !
Heard the Bose 901 Mk IV coupled with a Tandberg receiver, I still have trauma from the strange sound that I heard then. 😄
I made an awful purchase once and not so long ago, the B&W 702 s2, the tweeters could give you a migraine for nothing, the bass wasn’t there, I tried so many different amps to make them work, anyway moved them on but it taught me a valuable lesson in hifi, the only ears that matter are yours and never buy something unless you have home demo’s it
My first pair of speakers after getting my first career job was supposed to be B&W 305s. I had seen the Nautilus online and bought into B&W. However there was 2 top line stereo stores in my city, and the one that sold B&Ws wasn't open when I went to try them out. So I brought some CDs, to the other one, tried one out on a B&O Beosound (garbage), eventually went into the basement, tried a pair of Jamo 803s, played everything I could put at it, sounded awesome and the pretty much the cheapest thing you could buy at the store. So even though I didn't research them, I bought them.
The next day, I had major regret, I went into buying my speakers having researched the 305s, and I didn't even listen to them. I kicked myself for not trying them, but I thought I'd go out and try them out. Went to the B&W store, put my CDs on to the 305s... wow. Felt like I was listening to something through 5 inches of foam. Salesman asked what I thought, said, "Where's the base? the mids are even muted?". He's like, its a 305, just two speakers, you a Sub for these. Still have my Jamos 25 years later. One benefit, the salesguy played my test CDs on the B&W 801 setup (the one with the single 15"). Wow...
Fully agree with the Bose speakers got them on loan they lasted only one week and got another speaker agreed with the "worst speakers" I listen to and I did have quite a few during my 55-year HiFi journey!
I hate that eye contact myth.
I have to agree about the original Carver Amazing design. I bought the AL-III loudspeakers back in "95" and I still use them to this day. It's not easy getting them set up correctly, but once you do, the sound is addicting. It does take a ton of power to make them sing. There are tons of speakers out there that are better than these, but mine have served me well.
Wow, you still have the ones you bought! Good for you
I love your content. . . .and I don’t look directly at you either sometimes:)
Hi, Adrian - Dave from Winnipeg here. As you know, I’ve dealt with you for decades, ever since my several years living in Toronto in the 80s. You are the most trustworthy and honest person that I know in the industry. You have talked me out of and talked me into various products; all of which have proven so fruitful. I can’t think of a “worst” piece of equipment as I’ve always followed your sage advice. I suppose my only regret is the Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista as the units (integrated amp and CD player) eventually needed motherboard replacements and none were available worldwide so the units became junk.
Bose AM 5s
I can't put into words how ripped off I felt after buying those. I got suckered and was a fool. 30 years ago. I am desperate to upgrade as I listen to very large, orchestral music, but don't trust anything and it all just costs so much.
4000 cds, collecting dust, I'm getting old and fat and don't know what to do.
Very saddening and frustrating for me.
Don’t give up! With a vibrant used market, you should be able to find suitable speakers and system components.
Oh boy, my first speakers were home made Bose 901s! I joined a project at work where we built these speakers from engineering drawings made by a high level executive at my company and including the equalizers. Wow! What fun! But I was finally able to replaced them with Quad ESL-63 electrostatic speakers in 1985. Finally some great speakers and I’m planning to be buried with them. Yes, I’m joking, but I’m still in love with them.
I was selling mid-level audio in the early '70s; we knew back then that Bose was crap.
Worst… in college some Cerwin Vegas powered with those Carver cubes…. Loud and horrible at every frequency.
This video is fun. My worst product ever owned was my first Integrated amp. A yamaha AX 592 integrated. It had no bass at all and could not play loud enough for me and I hated the pure direct - It made the bass even thinner! Yet all the reviews raved about the "high current" design and power it had. This was back in university days and I had a hall mate who had an NAD powered system that absolutely pounded!
I am not from an Asian or Chinese culture and I have found you very believable for many years.
Hi Adrain. Thanks so much for your informative TH-cam clips. Re the Quad 57s. Much of what you said it true enough, but you can't expect the 57s to play rock, or any of its bastard handmaidens. The 57s were designed to reproduce music played by acoustic instruments, but most of all for vocals. That wonderful midrange that you mentioned, is the source of so much pleasure for those of us who own these magic speakers. I owned a pair for 40 years and only gave them away when I moved into a retirement unit, so no room for them. The 57s need at least 2 metres behind them and plenty of room to breathe, all round. So many people try to cram them into inadequate listening spaces and they suffer accordingly. Also using a subwoofer with them, definitely improves things. Cheers, John.
I own a pair of the ESL 57’s…matched with the right amplifier they are unsurpassed in what they do well. Speakers in a box don’t cut it for me, unless they are ribbons.
Agreed. !!
I liked hearing your stories and I am old enough to remember some of those products from the '80's!
I love the show. Your discussion of the Quads brought back my memory of my first true magical listening experience. It was with the Quad 63s being driven by Audio Research tube amps and preamp playing John Klemmer’s album Touch. I bought the system new in the 60s and had it for many years.
esl63 weren't introduced until the 80s.
I've owned a half dozen pairs with various mods through the years.
@happygil4698 you are correct, when I thought about it some more I bought them in 1988. Thanks for the correction.
One of the best speakers!!!❤❤
Please keep other parts coming! Can't wait to see them, thanks for sharing your opinion and have a great day.
Thanks
Great vid! Yes pIease, more of them 😀.
I also owned the Quad ESL "57". Loved them to death. Used the Quad II mono amps as well as the Quad 2 preamp with them as it was originaly intended and could play any kind of music on them, medium loud, for years, without having any problem ever. 👍
Relatively speaking, my worst regret was with a pair of TDL RTL-3.
I heard them at a dealer when I wasn’t thinking about auditioning loudspeakers, so I heard the demo with music that I didn’t knew, and I really loved the sound.
I waited anxiously for the delivery of my brand new pair, and the first impressions were bad.
I left them playing pink noise and music for several days, expecting them to get better.
I ended up selling them a few months later (I was lucky on finding a buyer), and never accepted any loudspeaker demo without the recordings that I’m very familiar with.
Never had a pair of TDL although I always wanted to hear a pair
Their RTL range was a huge step down from their earlier Studio series which were genuine transmission line designs and better in other respects too. The RTL series were reflex transmission lines which was really an economy version of a TL. The Studio range, Monitor and Reference Standard were very fine speakers. Many years later, Richer Sounds (UK) bought the name and had some own brand speakers labelled TDL but were nowhere near the quality of the original TDL designs.
I'm a, professional sound engineer. Ask anyone in my field about bose and they will laugh.
I will say in my opinion that I agree with most of what you said with the exception of the Bose. I have never owned a pair of Bose 901 however I have heard them properly set up, and I think that's the key.
I'm not insinuating what you heard or had or what have you was not properly done but in my recollection of hearing them properly set up and you've got to properly tweak them with the EQ, they have a particular sound. They have this big wall of sound type sound and it's definitely not to everybody's taste and I can understand that, but I think that for certain types of music particularly where mid-range timbre is important, they excelled and that coupled with that big wall of sound was actually quite pleasurable.
Anyway keep up the videos and always love your opinion and your style, and forget the haters that might nitpick you with certain things, be honest they're probably just jealous.
My worst speaker was B&W 703s. They were bright with massive cone breakup in the upper mids. They hurt my ears and left them ringing at moderate volume.
My worst amp was Rotel Class D. Wow etched vocals.
My best speakers were JBL 4367, best by a mile.
My favorite but maybe not best amp is/was the MC462. It does nothing wrong with tons of power.
Keep up the great job with the recent videos. Really enjoying them.
I had a Clearaudio Performance DC years ago I couldn’t stand. One of my worst purchases ever.
The worst audio product I've own is the JBL L300. They had a 15 inch woofer and compression horn tweeter and midrange. They had no imaging and no clearity. They had pretty good bass. There was always this horn coloration on everything I've played. This speaker was junk. I sold it after a month.
Appreciate these honest reviews you’re doing. Very revealing and entertaining. Please keep them coming. By the way your eye contact is fine. You can’t please everybody. Don’t let the turkeys get you down. My biggest regret was a DIY project with a friend. He talked me into getting speaker components from France and we had to build the cabinets from scratch. I’m talking getting the particle board from the lumberyard and cutting it up with hand tools and I’m not a carpenter. It was a nightmare I Would never do again. Will leave speaker building to the experts.
Decca Ribbon tweeters.
My buddy had the super tweeters, the aluminum cube ones. They sounded great when they weren't blown, which happened a lot.
Why they blew so often? Well, we were younger then, he possibly didn't have quite good enough power feeding them.
Great sounding tweeter, just a little delicate.
Worst I ever owned was a Harman/Kardon AVR 80 when I was a teenager. It kept turning the volume up to max by itself randomly, and literally caught on fire. Twice. Even after being repaired, it instantly caught on fire again when I turned it on. And every Marantz product I ever owned had issues.
A common issue for equipment that use rotary encoders for volume control
For me it was a NAD M10 integrated.
Bought it used in like new condition. Never sounded great, around a year later some board went out and it’s been at the repair shop for 5 months now…
no clue when I’ll get it back.
Emailed NAD and they said sucks to be you. 😔
It was literally my first hifi purchase.
Insightful... Thank You.
The one thing that I did not like was having a record turntable.... If I turned up the volume anything past medium,,... the speaker vibrations would affect it....
Right, I'm pretty sure you're talking about feedback. I bought an Akai turntable in 1980 that was bottom of the line, but it was all I could afford at the time. I thought it sounded good at the time, but as soon as I bought speakers that actually put out any serious bass, the feedback was impossible to deal with. I even put the turntable in the basement on the cement floor, and still got feedback from my speakers on the floor above! Certain turntables are MUCH more susceptible to feedback than others.
I went from mom’s Bose model 601s to Q Acoustics 3020is during COVID lockdowns and did my vintage pioneer A-9 more justice and see it currently as a stepping stone to eventually own Q Acoustics Concept 500s. Those affordable speaker real do blow Bose out of the water.
Haven’t heard them, but Q’s are highly reviewed and have interesting cabinet construction to dampen resonances. I’ll probably consider them if/ when I upgrade from my Emotiva T1+ towers( which I love)
In 1990 I bought a new Pioneer A-656 amplifier and Infinity RS4001 speakers. Nice system, great sound, but not for long: the popular Pioneer got stolen 3 weeks later. It was an out-of-production sale, insurance money wasn't enough to replace it with another one and it wasn't available anymore. Best I could do was a Denon PMA-725 but it never did as well with the Infinitys as the Pioneer did. 5 years later the Infinitys gave up.
I didn't do much with HiFi for 25 years, then I stumbled upon a refurbished Pioneer A-757 amplifier in perfect condition and I couldn't resist. Paired to refurbished Dutch Translator Impact4 speakers (comparable to Wharfedale Linton Heritage) the good sound is finally back again.
Wow--I didn't think you were old enough to remember "Stereo Review" and "High Fidelity." They seemed at times to promote products rather than present objective reviews, but they were still fun reads. "Audio" may have been the best of the three. RIP Julian Hirsch and all those reviewers who are no longer with us.
Yes, I am THAT old
@@adrianlow2114 so am I! I looked forward to reading Stereo Review to see that if it measured the same, it sounded the same. High Fidelity and Audio too. But then the products that they did review did basically all sound the same.
Audio Magazine's yearly product specifications publication was such a great purchasing tool.
It alone was worth the subscription price. I still have the last issue.@@v8beamer
@@v8beamer yes it was!
In Lexicon listening room at Bedford, MA, one will be kicked out of the room if mentions Bose.
After owning a quad amped plus sub system with linear response from 20Hz to 20kHz that can be adjusted to accommodate your mood (at times I like orchestra and at times rock), I can never go back to 1 amped systems. The clarity, imaging and bandwidth can never be achieved by these 1 amped passive crossed over speaker systems.
I came up in the 1970s and 1980s for HiFI. I loved the sound of the bose in the store, but didn't buy them, going with AR instead. Recently some people have measured the old Bose and remarkably, they are very flat speakers... the magic was in the selection of the drivers and crossovers that sum to an almost perfect speaker, using state-of-the-art tools (Klippel)... I remember them fondly but never owned them... it is too bad you had a terrible experience with them. Love the channel.
I agree. People are so ignorant and should know Adrian is a very courteous and speaks from the heart type person!!
As a 52yo audiophile, you had some amazingly broad products!
I am sure we have all purchased products we simply could not enjoy, usually when they are offered at a great price. My list includes; JBL L300 Summit speakers, Threshold A400 power amp, Ortofon MC3000 MK II cartridge, Audio Research SP-10 preamp, and Martin Logan (can’t remember the model but close to their most expensive).
😢 I loved my Amazing Loudspeakers and AL-IIIs, but always augmented them with subwoofers.
PS But my biggest purchase regret was Velodyne's flagship subwoofer ULD-18 for $2k back in '92. It sucked!
LOL... when you mentioned a pair of speakers I once owned that made your list. Great context!
I actually enjoyed listening to the Carver Amazing speakers in a showroom.... but chose not to purchase... I think you are right on with your list.. thanks and enjoy
I recall one of the last Tweeter stores. They had upstairs show rooms, and then usual range downstairs. The salesmen were comically rude. They would literally tell people to go to best buy. They had rolls of high thickness Monster Cable as the high margin add on and Macintosh was the premium brand then. When I exchanged an Ipod at end as defective it took 3 months. The end was near.
Very well done, Adrian - not what I expected. I might have called the video - 'the products which fell very far short of the hype'.
LOL, yes you are more precise
I don't really stair in the eye too especially as im thinking while talking. I understand that. Nothing wrong with it sir
Many of us see your sincerity
The Bose 901 needs an entire power substation to feed a 2000 watt amp to make that bad sound.
Amazingly, sociopaths and psychopaths are the best at looking people right in the eye.
Years ago, I got a too-good-to-pass-up price on a Mark Levinson No. 38 preamp from my local dealer. The preamp was functionally beautiful but sonically a dog. I sold it after owning it only a few months.
Great video! Love the format.
0:44 - The problem with looking at the camera is that many look at the *display* on the camera and not the (admittedly tiny) *lens* itself!
This was great. Can’t wait to hear more
Hi, I was very interested in your comments about the Quad ESL 57 electrostatic loudspeakers. In their day in the 60’s the Quads were hard to beat even though they had all the shortcomings you mentioned. In British hi fi circles at the time these unique speakers were very much to the forefront among hi fi enthusiasts. I followed a different route to my system preferring Lowther Acousta PM6 horn loaded speakers that were incredibly sensitive and only needed quite low powered tube amps that were the norm in the day. Quad produced extremely good valve amps, but my preference was for a product manufacturer that has long since gone; Radford Electronics.
regards, Roger
Oh boy.. you're dusting off old memories! I owned Lowther pm4 and was lent pm6a in Acousta cabinets. A friend built Huge rear horn loaded cabinets for them. Whatever we tried.. and how impressive, 3D and dynamic, sensitive.. none of
my audio friends nor me, were able to live with them. Talk about a temperamental
driver..
Bought a pair of Quad 57s in 1974
Still use them with updated Musical Fidelity A1 plus small RELs in my kitchen- luxury indeed
Certainly blew them up a few times
But live in UK so have got them repaired ok
I only play now at low levels - No Bruckner or head banging rock
All vocals are magic and remind me what’s beautiful tonality every day
Your Musical Fideiity A1 never blew up?
Not yet
It’s the 2023 one
I owned a pair of Quads for about two years. It had 3 great things going for it - midrange, midrange, midrange. Other than that, the shortcomings (beaming, lack of slam, roll-off in the bass and treble) prompted me to sell them and buy a pair of ADS 810s.
You are truly blessed with an amazing ability to convey information in an entertaining way. Love the video.
You're too kind, thanks
Whenever i hear the words "audiophile equipment" i instantly think, Boring Sound.
Nice video. Martin Logan CLS was very very transparent. It blew me away at an audio show. I bought a PS audio P10 power generation or something years ago. I only plugged my mono amps into it and it made my amps sound muddy. I sold it in less than a week.
I had the monolith 3s were excellent, transparent, excellent bass. The amplifier was either threshold 100 watt class A or pass labs 100 watt class A. Maybe you didn't have enough power to drive them properly. I then got Soundlab A1PX and have loved those ever since, great transparency and good bass. Need lots of amplification. Now using PS Audio BHK 600. The Soundlabs shine.
I completely agree about the Wilson WITT. I LOVED the WATT/Puppy 5.1 but was disappointed in the deep bass so the WITT was more attractively priced and was touted to have the deep bass extension that was missing from the W/P. Turned out the deep bass extension was about the same, but the driver integration was downright poor. The deep bass extension was greatly improved in the W/P6 which I used for about a year. In what seemed like a backward move I then went to the Sophia. For whatever reason the Sophia's locked with my room acoustics in a way the W/P never quite did and they just vanished, just you and a direct connection to the music. I went through several sets of high end electronics before finally acquiring Spectral, which were the most neutral sets I've experienced.
I also completely agree on the Quad ESL57. I rebuilt a set that an owner had carelessly blown both tweeters and one bass panel. The transparency was breathtaking, if all I ever listened to was small scale music I'd still have them. They couldn't do Mahler and completely forget about live Grateful Dead (Wilson happens to be Supreme on both!).The day I sold them, the instant the buyer's car disappeared from view I thought "what the hell did just do, you idiot"...I agree on Martin Logans. I've never liked the integration between the woofers and the panels, though recent models have been better. I have little experience with Acoustat; I liked what I heard but had no extensive experience with them. I'm wondering if it was a source/headed gear issue. I have no experience with the Carver other than knowing they were wicked insensitive and I've always hated Bose, though their headphones and car systems I've thought were decent
Found your channel only recently and much enjoy your insight and knowledge - thanks for the videos and I'll keep following
Thank you
Peter Moncref was the first to coin the blind effect from my memory in the early 80's causing the sweet spot to be very tight move your head a small amount was hell on the image.
Great video Adrian. Next up - your most favored audio speakers & gear please.
I auditioned the 1st edition of the 901’s but retuned them with a few days. I still have and use the Bose Wave Radio/ alarm clock! 😂
I took my esl's and paired them with a Genelec two-way and just tapped the bas driver and its passive Xover and they were such a dream, I would use them for mid-fields in the studio back in the day, and finally an engineer popped the tweets and I was moving to a new room anyway about that time, and just got rid of it all by parting it all out.
Did you use the Bose equalizer with the 901s? It’s part of the design and needed for the speakers to sound right.
Any man who loves McIntosh MC-30s is a friend of mine. IMHO they were and are the pinnacle of McIntosh amplifiers.
I also owned a pair of Apogee Stages (Great loudspeaker) then in 2009, I bought a pair of Apogee Mini Grands it used the stages with a subwoofer box with Vifa woofer Drivers that had reliability issues. They required two separate amps to drive them one for the stages and one for the Vifa Subwoofer boxes. I had a ML 27 driving the subwoofers and tube amps driving the stages
Vifa went out of business years later. And if was impossible to find a replacement drivers that matched the output of the Vifa’s. So when you had to replace one of the 2 drivers in each subwoofer Box, you had to replace all the drivers. It was a PIA!
A very interesting video. I have almost the same list as you! I did not succumb to the Bose hype, so was spared there. I did, however, try the Carver Amazing speakers. Yes, the ribbons sounded so bad I thought they were broken. I also owned Quad 57s at the time and by using two small chokes to feed the bass only into the Carvers as well as full range to the Quads, I had one of the best sounds I have had. The bass was increassed and extended but the character of the sound didn't change as it does if you use normal woofers with Quads. I agree about the Martin Logans, the CLS is an excellent listening experience, I was the local service agent for Martin Logan for 10 years or so but I don't like the sound of electrostatic speakers crossed over to woofers. The only Wilson speakers I have heard were Witts owned by a friend and I thought them unnatural and unpleasant. I sold the owner a pair of JBL 4350 (double 15", one 12", horn and tweeter) studio monitors to replace them. I am a sound engineer and electronic technician and I work on a lot of high end HIFi. Most of the valve amplifiers I see, including Audio Reserch, overdrive the valves. This was not a big problem with US and European made valves (Toobs if you're in North America.) but is a major issue with current valves. I modify the amplifiers slightly which reduces the output power about 5% and extends the valve life 3 fold with no obvious change in the sound. A 5% reduction in output power is basically un-noticeable. I had an AR D-150 amplifier which fried resistors and charred the PC board when valves failed. I consider the construction of that amp poorly implimented.
YES!! 100% agree about the hybrid Martin Logans. Their lack of mid bass is an absolute deal breaker for me. If all I ever listened to were female vocals or acoustic guitar, then they would be great for that type of music. Otherwise they are horrible as even a baritone does not sound chesty enough. Last time I auditioned the Montis and the characteristic weakness of ML was gone. I think it’s because they x-overed at higher frequency, allowing the pistonic woofer to handle the mid bass.
My worst bit of kit was an Origin Live Conqueror tonearm. I wanted an upgrade to my Technics SL1200 turntable. The Origin Live was no improvement - a downgrade in fact as it lost the ease of use the stock tonearm. I now keep the stock Technics tonearm on one TT and a Jelco 750 on the other.
Our catchphrase at the audio store I worked at in the late 1970’s was “all highs no lows must be Bose”. They were absolutely the worst value for the money in loudspeakers and were considered the ‘McDonalds’ of the speaker manufacturers. Also interesting to note that they NEVER published their specs in any of the annual Stereo Review and Audio buyers guide - gee, I wonder why? Amazing what clever marketing could do to brainwash the general public to make Bose the ‘Kleenex’ of the speaker world…
Great video again and thanks for it ! I've a remark what concern electrostatic loudspeakers. I own final 1000i for a couple of years and these are full range loudspeakers. Maybe the problems you noticed does'nt exist with full range ones. No filter, only one speaker to reproduce all the range of music, but the problem of a narrow stage does remains. In my case, I'm using diffusion panels in my room (front wall, back wall and ceiling) and it's quite different to get a wider stage. No love and hate relationship for me ! Thanks again for this !
The issue I had with Acoustat also extended to their electrostatc models. They always sounded veiled and dull at the highs. And not particularly dynamic (contrast) though they could play loud.
The Martin Logan original CLS I had for years, they were shockingly good speakers.
Worst Hifi product I’ve owned is a Cambridge audio 851n.
Absolutely infuriating to use, constantly stoped playing music, having to restart it all the time. The screen didn’t know what it was doing. Waited months for multiple software updates and still didn’t fix the problem only to be told it was a hardware issue.
I owned a pair of Carver Amazings. I fell in love with the ribbon midrange and highs, but (a) they did require substantial power, (b) as dipoles, they were critical to place, and (c) given the linear falloff of the ribbons and the quadratic falloff of the woofers, we're a pain to match highs and lows. Did I mention they were very (d) directional?
But, when positioned just right. And sitting on the sweet spot, they were, well, amazing!
They weren't bad as much as difficult.