What Audio Gear Ended Up Being Better Than You Initially Thought?

This. When I was a kid, it sounded lifeless through my parents’ poor speakers, with the mediocre cassettes I was feeding it.

30 years later I brought it home and hooked it up to my good speakers, almost as a joke. The imaging and detail from this amp blew me away. The cassette deck is entirely decent, as is the phono stage. The FM tuner was reading stereo but playing mono; an alignment fixed that. Only the headphone amp is mediocre; a Cavalli CTH is coming in the mail this afternoon to rectify that. We’ll see how it sounds with the HD-6xx.

It’s an entirely liveable living oom system with Avid 102a soeakers.

 

Pioneer PLX-1000. Punches high above its price range. I hope it lasts enough to be the first turntable of my 3 years old son.

 

The Rega TT-PSU.

 

Purchased on a whim (I had never owned the older classic Epos speakers): Epos Elan 15 speakers. Wow......value for money indeed. Great bass, beautiful treble clarity. They carry orchestral music with authority and great instrumental separation. It's difficult to make a case for spending more. Their footprint in the USA was perhaps minor......an unsung hero amongst speakers.

 

Dual 721 turntable. Sonically as good as a Thorens T160 but with all the conveniences.

 

Picked up a pair of little JBL LSR305 monitors for my office. Was planning to add a sub but was pleasantly surprised by the full and tight low end they produce on their own.

 

The Chromecast Audio is well worth the $15. When using the optical connection, it sounds just as good as good as DAC it's feeding. Great value overall.

 

Seriously, $15?? We have to pay €39 !

 

An old German designed and made console stereo by Grundig. It was my first vacuum tube system! Discovered by chance when I was a young tween. That was the day I stumbled upon the entrance to the rabbit hole!
-Bill

 

My very inexpensive (for a tube amp) GemTune BL-02 single ended EL-34 pentode amp surprised the hell out of me. I've been in this hobby for many decades and whenever I read reviews of single ended tube amps I would laugh at the extreme high distortion, very low power and high cost and think what kind of a dummy would buy such a thing when you can buy a SS amp with vanishing distortion and very high power for cheap? Well, curiosity finally got the better of me and I saw this cheap amp so why not. I'll be damned if it turns out that it sounds amazingly good in my office setup, even with 89 db paradigms which are far too low in efficiency to do justice to a SEP/SET amp. Next thing I might try horn speakers!

 

For me it's the Okki Nokki RCM- I know, not really audio gear per se but I look at it as an integrated part of my sound system.

 

Phase Tech 2.5 speakers: https://phasetech.mseaudio.com/wp-content/uploads/Phase-Technology-Brochure-Teatro-2.5-3.5.pdf

When I saw these in the shop I ignored them. The salespeople ignored them too. They were so inexpensive and plain looking...just tiny, little black boxes. I assumed they could not possibly be any good. The shop sold much more expensive brands and those were the ones the salespeople pushed and gushed over.

Then one day for some reason (I can't even remember the reason) I asked for these to be connected...and I was astonished! It was like some kind of powerful magic, but the plainest, most humble (and cheapest) speakers in the place turned out to be the best sounding. Up until that point I had suffered through countless mini-monitors and bookshelf speakers with metal dome tweeters, so I was not prepared for how sweet, liquid and realistic the Phase Tech 2.5 fabric dome tweeter sounded. It made music a fun, non-fatiguing experience.

Plus, there was really strong cohesion between the Phase Tech fabric dome tweeter and polymer woofer. They sounded like one drive unit...to the point that I no longer heard what the individual drivers were doing and concentrated on the music. I was so used to more exotic drivers made of titanium, aluminum, magnesium, and kevlar that rarely ever mated well with drivers made of other materials to the point where all I heard was the drivers rather than the music. The Phase Tech 2.5 speakers were like a breath of fresh, clean air in comparison.

This was twenty years ago. These speakers have long been discontinued but the Phase Tech Company is still in business (though they never advertise or go to shows).

 

Horn speakers will bring out its flaws. Many low powered tube amps do sound good when coupled to average speakers where they are literally right in your face, such as a desk system. I actually use a tube amp on my desk at my office to drive some tiny speakers and neither would seem like they would sound great based on their own merit, but when paired into a very small space, they are more than sufficient.
-Bill

 

Shure M95ED cartridge....acquired it without a stylus, went with a Jico HE instead of the SAS. Very pleased with it!

 

I have a very entry level system, but when i added in a Cambridge DAC Magic, i couldnt believe the difference. Brought the whole system to life (and consequently led me down the path to upgrading everything else i had...)

 

The NAD 3020 amplifier.

 

Interesting. I wonder if anyone has actually run one of these inexpensive amps or something similar with horn speakers. Just curious to hear their impressions. My main system uses Magneplanars so this little amp just croaks on those speakers (I tried).

 

Streaming Sirius radio. Very surprised at how good it sounds. Much better than in the car.

 

KZ ATE in ear monitors for around $13. I've owned a couple $300+ iems and feel I'm losing nothing when I use these. https://www.amazon.com/Earphone-Hea...ie=UTF8&qid=1544991279&sr=8-3&keywords=kz+ate

I had tried a couple other well reviewed iems from Amazon. These are the real deal for me.

 

Those KZ ATEs are crazy good. I don’t reach for my Westone in ears anymore after buying a pair of those.

For me, I’ve been stunned by how much I like the KEF LS50 Wireless speakers that I picked up from Craigslist. They are taking all of the pain out of downsizing my system.

I auditioned a pair of the LS50 passives a year or so ago (powered by Parasound amps of some kind) and loved the imaging but heard a graininess to the upper mids that I knew I couldn’t live with. I wasn’t sure I’d like the Wireless version, especially since I heard that KEF commissioned Parasound to make the class D amps inside of them. But these active LS50W have none of that graininess, go deeper, and are just easy to love. A real winner.

 

HD600 headphones. I used them for a couple years out of various things. Thought they were ok but didn't get all the praise. With a good amp and dac it's night and day and they scale amazingly. I still can't wrap my brain around that.

 

I have used more expensive low powered amps on many speakers, including HE horn designs. I am not a HE horn speaker fan for the most part. They have colorations of their own. Add a colored sounding amp and you have a system that carries with it its own sound signature over into everything that passes through it. Some of these systems can have very low harmonic distortion and yet the horn and speaker enclosure itself can cause some colorations. Despite thousands of cries for marrying low power tube amps with HE speakers, I found the best sound into a hideously colored, loud horn speaker (LaScala) was actually achieved using a warm sounding and modestly powered SS amp. Way lower noise floor and a better frequency balance.
-Bill

 

The last I was running my vintage Altec Lansing horn speaker's, was with a small 3.9-Watt Decware amp.

It is a match made in heaven!

 

Boston Acoustics Cr6 speakers. Bought these as rear speakers years ago for a surround system that had Paradigm Studio 40s up front. Used them in a pinch for a stereo setup and was floored at how “right” these little speakers sound. Perfect pace I guess is how I would describe them, they get your toes tapping. I don’t use them as rears anymore, they are in my master bedroom system with a Pioneer SX750. Oh yea.
Saw them in a thrift store a while back for 30 bones, told the kid working the counter “do yourself a favor and buy these speakers”. I left him looking them over with interest.

 

I don't know about current day La Scala's, but I have a pair of legacy La Scala's.

La Scala's are remarkably clear and really beautiful sounding at low volume.

They are ultra sensitive, even more sensitive than the Altec A7's.

I have used them very successfully at lower volumes with a nice pleasant sounding SS amp.

But, the legacy Klipsch speaker's have a perfectly awful squaker horn!

Listening to it at higher volume levels will take your head off!

Legacy Klipsch driver's are not as well made as the Altec's are made and they tend to become shrill when played at higher volume levels.

La Scala's and SS amps are not a combination that I would recommend, at least with the legacy ones.

Another problem with the legacy La Scala's is that while they have excellent bass, it is only good to around 60-Hz. at the -3 dB level.

With the Altec A7's, when you turn up the power, the sound spreads out and becomes bigger and the bass blooms and becomes fuller. With the La Scalla's, they only become louder.

I have some permanent hearing damage in my left ear from them, back in 2014. I did find out the hard way!

I kept turning them up, hoping that they would "bloom" like the Altec's, but that was never going to happen.

I had them hooked up to the SS amp at that time.

Tube amps are the La Scala's friend. the same can be said with all of the Klipsch legacy products.

They were designed, after all, back in the days when they were run off of all tube amplification.

The La Scala's have the same driver's that are in the huge K-horn's, but in the much smaller folder horn cabinet, they physically can not produce the full and well balanced bass that the massive K-horn cabinet's can.

BTW, it was a lifetime dream of mine, to own a pair of La Scala's!

I do have an NOS pair of Altec 811B horns and NOS driver's that I planned on replacing the squaker horn with.

I also planned on replacing the factory stock crossover's with ALK crossover's like I have in the A7's.

Altec crossover's are pretty terrible too.