Worst Audio Purchases You Made

[Exit]

Small Advent – Sounded great in demo but bottomed out or became sloppy so easy with any low bass you had to turn the volume almost off. $140 pr loss. Circa 1968.

Cambridge Soundworks 8” powered subwoofer – bottoms out so easy with any bass you have to turn the volume almost off. Totally useless $350 loss. Circa 1998.

Radio Shack 10” powered subwoofer – budget purchase where you got what you paid for – almost nothing. $200 loss Circa 1998.

 

[MidnightSensi]

Pinnacle Sonic 500. What a piece of **** pair of subwoofers. Got them for 1/4 of what MSRP was... and I still don't think they were worth it. Collecting dust now, should sell them.

Escient Fireball. Had two go bad. Rather have an Apple TV.

 

[Seth=L]

Bose 2.1 system from Circuit City. It came with a passive subwoofer (not even the big passive one) and two cube speakers (not the direct reflecting ones) for $150. Believe it or not, it sounded like garbage (even when connected to a Kenwood stereo receiver, weird I know).

 

[Seth=L]

Pinnacle Sonic 500. What a piece of **** pair of subwoofers. Got them for 1/4 of what MSRP was... and I still don't think they were worth it. Collecting dust now, should sell them.

Escient Fireball. Had two go bad. Rather have an Apple TV.

What's the going price on those?

 

[MidnightSensi]

Oh, Philips Pronto.

I hate anything macro based though. I'd rather just use seperate controls.

I call Crestron's "Confusitrons" because they never know what the hell the rest of the system is doing unless the unit has feedback, which most gear doesn't still.

What's the going price on those?

Fireball or Apple TV? I think Apple TVs are like 250 bucks for the big one, I remember it was so cheap I payed cash so I don't remember.

Fireball is like 4,000 for the unit I got. I will give them they stand behind the product though, they replaced every one that blew up and paid for quick shipping.

 

[Halon451]

1.) JBL Sub-12 Subwoofer, from Best Buy. $340

2.) Kenwood HTIB (several years ago now before I knew better, ) $199.99

3.) Any Monster Cables...

 

[rnatalli]

Bose system in my youth.

 

[aberkowitz]

$150 HDMI monster cable... and I was so proud of it too!

 

[jamie2112]

A sony dvd player that broke after 1 movie. I took it back and got my money back...

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Mps-1......

 

[jvgillow]

My worst audio purchase was the Technical Hi-Fi X5000 pro amp. I used it once and then sold it because the low bass performance was poor. That and the cheapo digital VUs on the front just looked nasty. The build quality was ok and the packaging was nice.

http://www.123dj.com/amps/technicalhifi/x5000.html

For a typical DJ type speaker that doesn't do anything below 40Hz it would probably work just fine.

Bose Triports come in probably at 2nd place but I sold them for a profit and at the time I did think they sounded pretty good.

 

[Matt34]

A Kenwood 100 disc CD player or that Bose center channel.

 

[unreal.freak]

the worst purchase ive made so far was a KLH 5.1 surround sound set.
It was better than the TV speakers....but not much.

Peace,
Tommy

 

[soundhound]

see post in this thread:

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=474120&postcount=7

 

[mike c]

3) Logitech Harmony - it's a good unit, but you just can't teach an old dog new tricks - i keep reaching for the old remotes

2) Rotel RMB1077 - it does what it says it does, but it's much too expensive, and i can think of a million other uses for the money spent

1) eD subwoofers - wasted time and money on these.

 

[WINGNUT4772]

Panasonic HTIB at Walmart...actually it is what got me started in HT so it may actualy have been the best.

 

[Davemcc]

All the HTIB's I tried before building a real system were a waste, especially the Bose 3-2-1.

 

[Adam]

Reminds me of this thread from last month.

For me...IPS-1.

 

[Geno]

1. Philips Pronto Neo programmable remote. Totally baffling to program, very unreliable. $250 in the toilet.
2. KLH speakers & powered sub from Costco. What a waste of sawdust, glue, & cheesy vinyl. I was a chump.

 

[10010011]

RCA Lyra MP3 player in 1998 paid $350 for it and it only came with a 48MB CF card
I was one of the first portable MP3 Players available and it could play MP3, MP3-Pro, Real Media, and later WMA files.

In reality is did not play any of these files directly but converted them to an MPX file that could only be played on a Lyra. This was do to RCA's fear of being sued for making a pirate music transporting device or something like that.

Anyway that was the last straw for early adopting for me.

Oh yeah that Ion USB turntable I got a Costco for $80, what a piece of crap.

My good turntable and a Rat-Shack phono preamp connected to my sound card makes better sounding WAV files from my records then that ION ever did .