What's the Single Worst Piece of Audio Equipment You've Ever Experienced?

I think people just try to use the default settings instead of activating Column Browser and Song View, etc. and get frustrated.

 

I learned programming with punch cards and begging for access time to a CDC, learned assembler and did a bunch of stuff after I decided that programming wasn't for me and yet I too found iTune to be obfuscating, irritating and certainly not worth any effort to master its peculiarity when other alternatives were available.

 

They were like a mail order Radio Shack. They marketed different do-dads and gismos to the masses.

Overall, there were a lot worse companies than them. They were a legit company and you could return a product if you weren't satisfied with it.

They are still in business and pretty much still do the same thing.

Mostly, their stuff is not expensive and does what it claims to do.

 

Issues people have with it range from extremely minor insignificant problems to severe ones. It really isn't that simple, though I wish it were.

 

Strange to say that one of the worst equipment choices for me were Klipsch LaScala speakers. Why....... it caused me to immediately run out and change them for Klipschorns costing me more $$$.

 

I knew they had gone under, then were trying to make a comeback. Didn't know they were still around. Seems like a much, much smaller product offering now, at least online.

Check this out for nostalgic sake:
(I can't get the URL to post correctly, so put HTTPS :// in front of this): archive.org/details/DAK_Catalog_Summer_1990

 

Yup, the joke in the industry is they make the knockoffs during "third shift" at the same plants that make the real products many times using the same tools.

 

A Crown IC-150. It was like sticking an ice pick into you ear.

 

An Audio Power Power Wedge AC conditioner which I purchased years ago based upon several positive magazine reviews. I promptly resold it to someone else that had likely read the same reviews- LOL! It dulled the sound and constricted dynamics with any component I plugged into it.

 

Yeah, I had one of those. Lasted a month or two.

 

either these Polk speakers




or this fuzz pedal. It sounded so awful that we ended up using it as an ashtray at art college. The joke was on us - apparently somebody like Pete Townsend or someone famous like that, used it in the 60s or 70s - and thusly it must have been magical, and prices on Ebay went thru the roof on Ebay at one point.

 

A friend's Muntz under-dashboard car 8-track player. "Crosstalk" doesn't even begin to describe the experience of listening to two songs at once. I was with him when he got it installed, and I squirmed all the way back to our town -- 60 miles or so.

 

touché

Usually though, hipsters don’t spend a significant sum on a turntable, tonearm and phono stage. Not unless they’re really rich hipsters with lots of money to throw away. A hipster table is usually an Audio Technica Bluetooth turntable or, worst case scenario, a Crossley

 

Who said anything about going back to using punch cards to program. I hated them and was thrilled to move on to keyboard interactivity. If you read the thee posts (incl. one by myself) who referenced punched-card programming all said they started using them. Nothing about a desire to return to those days.

 

I totally agree with your second point...but you can’t leave us hanging like that on the first point

 

Doesn’t stop them from knowing everything

 

That stupid bone fone! Thought I would hear incredible sound reverberating through my entire body. I didn’t.

 

I don't remember the exact year, and it really wasn't a terrible receiver, but I recall a mid'80'd (give or take a few years) Sansui that had just about every different type of button on it. Knobs, little buttons, a slider, plastic clear tabs, just really terrible design when I think back to it now. I probably thought it was wicked cool, way back when.

 

I don’t know. The bermester in my Mercedes sounds pretty awesome!

 

The 1990's version of AR-9 loudspeakers.

I don't consider them even to be ARs.

You can find the history of what happened to AR here:
Acoustic Research - Wikipedia

Anyway, I am still a big fan of the classic AR era, my first set of 'real' stereo speakers were a pair of AR-14s in the late '70s -- and the company was a big deal from the '50s through the 1967 buyout that made it "Teledyne Acoustic Research" and on through the '70s and early '80s. But then Teledyne sold AR to Jensen in 1989. It must have been then that AR turned into plastic garbage.

So, the AR9's. I actually have a pair of the original model that was produced 1978 ~ 1982. They look like this:



So anyway in ... I think it was 1998 I was in a home electronics store, mostly TVs and VCRs and noticed they had an audio listening room with what they carried hooked up and I went in there and was surprised to see they had a pair of "AR-9s"! I had no idea AR even existed anymore at that point, but having been such a fan in the past, it piqued my interest. But something was wrong. They looked like this:



They looked pretty cheap from what I remembered about ARs. But anyway I thought 'hey, they're still calling them AR-9s, that must mean something."

What it meant was screaming, ear-bleeding bad sound. I'd gotten the salesman to cue up some rock and crank it up and it was bad, bad, bad. Hurt my ears. The mids and highs were just screaming painful. There was nothing whatsoever pleasant about the way those speakers sounded. Nothing. I hurried out of that listening room afraid of permanent damage.

They were about $500 a pair at the time. I never for second considered it. I left the shop kind of depressed, thinking, "well, that's the way of the world isn't it. Keep the name, trade on the reputation it once had, and turn it into crap."

I don't know if those were the single worst piece of gear I've ever heard, but they've got to be right up there.

 

Yep, I had a similar one that, I used happily for nearly 30 years.

 

Going back in time far enough that they were in use. Sounding like having a lot of computer experience, etc.

 

The AR9's were ground breaking.
At the time.

 

I once had some lower tier Polk loudspeakers that were absolute crap, forget which model but whatever... And I’m sorry to say that everything I’ve had with a Denon badge stopped working about a year into ownership.

 

Denon Avr-2809ci - absolute dreck. Endured it for three years before replacing it with a similar unit from another manufacturer. Changed nothing else, but the improvement in sound quality was astounding.


NAD CD player circa 1985 (may have been their first). Queued up Robert Plant Shaken n Stirred, hit play and a thousand snakes dropped from the ceiling. Hit stop, packed it up and stuck to vinyl for another 15 years.

Cheers,
Robert