What is the worst consumer electronics purchase you ever made?

[Auditor55]

I'm talking about serious buyer remorse and regret.

 

[Hetfield]

When I started to get into what I consider high end home theater I bought an awesome Parasound amp that I still have and kicks ass. The goal was separates because as we all know separates are "better sounding" than receivers and are for"serious home theater guys". I went and bought a really expensive Parasound processor to go with the amp, THX ultra certified and all. I absolutely hated it and it turns out after that product Parasound got it of the home theater processor biz. Anyway I sold the Parasound processor at a large loss and bought a Marantz processor that sounded just gorgeous.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[highfigh]

When I started to get into what I consider high end home theater I bought an awesome Parasound amp that I still have and kicks ass. The goal was separates because as we all know separates are "better sounding" than receivers and are for"serious home theater guys". I went and bought a really expensive Parasound processor to go with the amp, THX ultra certified and all. I absolutely hated it and it turns out after that product Parasound got it of the home theater processor biz. Anyway I sold the Parasound processor at a large loss and bought a Marantz processor that sounded just gorgeous.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

They, as a small company, couldn't react quickly enough to changes in video standards and that's the reason they were always a day late and a dollar short. It's really expensive to sit at the adult's table in some areas of electronics. I called Parasound to get some info and discussed the video processor issue with Richard Schramm, who's the head of Parasound, and he hated the fact that they couldn't keep up but they eventually decided that they were an audio company, not a "We make it all" company.

 

[Hetfield]

They, as a small company, couldn't react quickly enough to changes in video standards and that's the reason they were always a day late and a dollar short. It's really expensive to sit at the adult's table in some areas of electronics. I called Parasound to get some info and discussed the video processor issue with Richard Schramm, who's the head of Parasound, and he hated the fact that they couldn't keep up but they eventually decided that they were an audio company, not a "We make it all" company.

Exactly yes, I was told they want nothing to do with HDMI as far as home theater goes. Too expensive to keep with as you said. They basically are an amp company and two channel music company.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[highfigh]

Exactly yes, I was told they want nothing to do with HDMI as far as home theater goes. Too expensive to keep with as you said. They basically are an amp company and two channel music company.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

I started calling HDMI "Horribly Defective Multimedia Interface" in about 2003. If I was an AV manufacturer, I couldn't imagine wanting to deal with that crap- it has been bad enough as an integrator.

 

[Auditor55]

When I started to get into what I consider high end home theater I bought an awesome Parasound amp that I still have and kicks ass. The goal was separates because as we all know separates are "better sounding" than receivers and are for"serious home theater guys". I went and bought a really expensive Parasound processor to go with the amp, THX ultra certified and all. I absolutely hated it and it turns out after that product Parasound got it of the home theater processor biz. Anyway I sold the Parasound processor at a large loss and bought a Marantz processor that sounded just gorgeous.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Wow!!

 

[Eppie]

To be honest, I can't think of one. I took an early interest in electronics in high school and was already building circuits and playing with low power lasers as a teen. After high school I visited a friend's car audio shop every day after looking for work in the morning and started helping with repairs to pass the time. Had a natural aptitude for repairing electronics so he hired me and I worked there for 7 years while putting myself through university. When you repair audio/video gear you learn about good and bad engineering, so I always researched my purchases. The only bad piece of gear I owned was a Mitsubishi CD player that tended to skip, but it was an early model and came as a freebee with a car purchase so I don't count that one.

 

[MrBoat]

I don't know about buying the worst, but I know I had a lot of fun with what the internet rumor mills now say was so horrible. Yep. I'm one of the ones who bought furniture store ( White-woofered, Fisher Studio Standard, 100 watt rack system) grade, high powered systems of the '80s. I got more use and goose bumps from that system on every possible type of mainstream music, than anything since. So much so, I kept it.

I figure the horribleness of that system, coupled with the horrible rooms I inhabited, must have had a cancelling to glory effect somehow. I am also now convinced that most music was standardized to these more mainstream systems because proper high fidelity systems sure are picky about what they will play.

 

[}Fear_Inoculum{]

Bought a house in 2013. The reason I wanted the house? It had a dedicated home theater/media room. I really couldn't have cared less about the rest of the house. Don't get me wrong it's a nice house, but that was the major selling point for me because I'd always wanted a real home theater.

After nearly 3 years of using the HT room as a storage, spare bedroom (despite the fact the house has 4 bedrooms with a spare already), and kids hang out area, I finally decided that it was time to start using it for its intended purpose.

I did very minimal research into HT equipment. One of the local big box retailers here in Canada (Visions) was having a sale along with a "do not pay for 36 months OAC" deal. So I headed over there.

I was looking at the Klipsch and Polk speakers that they had. The sales guy demoed another brand, and in store they sounded great. They were "endorsed" by a well know Canadian sound engineer named Ian Paisley. On top of that, he cut me a really good deal on on entire 5.1 package, with an Epson 8350 projector and a Yamaha RX-A2040 receiver.

Anyway, when my subwoofer blew up around Christmas time last year, I started researching into a new subwoofer. I wasn't unhappy per se with my system, but found out it definitely wasn't nearly as high end as I'd been led to believe. I did use it for years, and we got a lot of enjoyment out of it TBH. But I feel like I was taken advantage of, and wasted ~2K. C'est la vie.

 

[Eppie]

Oh yeah, I guess I totally forgot about my first sub. Now I'm gonna sound like a fool after that previous post. I assumed that the Klipsch brand name was enough to go by and picked up a KW-100 on sale thinking that a relatively inexpensive 10" sub would be fine for the size of the room. While it was an improvement over no sub, the electronics in that sub were crap. Won't go that route again and lesson learned.

 

[Pogre]

I saw this thread yesterday and think it's an interesting topic, but I have to think on it a bit. Of course I've had some blunders but the worst one is hard to say...

 

[Kvn_Walker]

I saw this thread yesterday and think it's an interesting topic, but I have to think on it a bit. Of course I've had some blunders but the worst one is hard to say...

Unless you bought it out of the back of a white van, there's always worse.

 

[Sealman]

My first rear surround speakers were Boston Acoustics Cr4's. They were setup poorly due to room issues so I chalked their sound up to placement issues and/or DPL.
I then repurposed them to computer speakers powered by a receiver. OMG they were horrible. Even though it took several years to discover this I still consider them as my worst HT purchase.

 

[Auditor55]

To be honest, I can't think of one. I took an early interest in electronics in high school and was already building circuits and playing with low power lasers as a teen. After high school I visited a friend's car audio shop every day after looking for work in the morning and started helping with repairs to pass the time. Had a natural aptitude for repairing electronics so he hired me and I worked there for 7 years while putting myself through university. When you repair audio/video gear you learn about good and bad engineering, so I always researched my purchases. The only bad piece of gear I owned was a Mitsubishi CD player that tended to skip, but it was an early model and came as a freebee with a car purchase so I don't count that one.

It's funny that you mentioned car audio. I purchased a Pioneer in dash car stereo with DVD to replace my 13 year old Sony in dash DVD due to poor radio reception. The newer Pioneer was no better than the older Sony car stereo, in some ways inferior with bad radio reception as well. I wasted a lot of money, that still sting me, whenever I think about. Huge mistake.

 

[Pogre]

It's funny that you mentioned car audio. I purchased a Pioneer in dash car stereo with DVD to replace my 13 year old Sony in dash DVD due to poor radio reception. The newer Pioneer was no better than the older Sony car stereo, in some ways inferior with bad radio reception as well. I wasted a lot of money, that still sting me, whenever I think about. Huge mistake.

Another funny thing about audio in general, seems like when you're young it's all about your car and when you get older it's about home audio. At least that's how it went with me. My car stereo is a joke, lol. Stock, of course.

 

[Cos]

I have two.

HTC Evo 3D phone. I had the original Evo from Sprint and that phone was the best android at the time. Was natural to move to the newer model. Not so much. Took really bad 3D pictures, really bad 3D games that made you sick to play and I could not get the battery life to last more than 2-3 hours even if I wasn't using it. After two returns, ended up with the Motorola Photon, which worked well.

Microsoft Zune...enough said.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

When I started to get into what I consider high end home theater I bought an awesome Parasound amp that I still have and kicks ass. The goal was separates because as we all know separates are "better sounding" than receivers and are for"serious home theater guys". I went and bought a really expensive Parasound processor to go with the amp, THX ultra certified and all. I absolutely hated it and it turns out after that product Parasound got it of the home theater processor biz. Anyway I sold the Parasound processor at a large loss and bought a Marantz processor that sounded just gorgeous.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

What’s your takeaway message?

If you’re buying an AVR or AVP, better stick to the giant brands of Marantz, Denon and Yamaha who have been making them for the last 50 years?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Anyone who knows me here for a while probably knows what my “mistake” was.

I’ll give you a hint. AVP. $7,500. 8 years.

My takeaway message: don’t spend too much.

 

[lovinthehd]

Can't think of any particularly horrible ones....I've generally had pretty good luck and do my homework before buying. Did have two refurb returns, but I didn't really end up buying rather than trying in that case. Had a Pioneeer avr that crapped out in two years just after warranty....but got two good years out of it.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

...when my subwoofer blew up...

Your sub amp blew up or the woofer blew up?