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What have you owned that reviewers loved but you hated?

zippy said:
there was in fact a rumour going around that the original reviewer had never even listened to them
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That would almost certainly be Paul Benson's review for HFA, which I'm pretty sure was the first in the UK.

I'd suggest that not only did Mr B give them a thorough going over, any neighbours within a 500 yard radius would have been pretty familiar with their sound as well.
 
Made a terrible mistake with some Rehdeko loudspeakers. A number of reviewers rated them for realism, dynamics blah blah. Total and unremitting garbage (for me). I tried really hard to get them to work well - valves versus solid state, different cables, positioning etc. The sound was so screechy that I was convinced that I was doing something stupid. Eventually I had to admit defeat. Strangely the chap that bought them from me loved the design and had previously owned a pair of the slightly smaller version (thus alleviating my potential guilt for selling them on). Reminded me that there is no universal right answer.
 
Dual CS505 had the uncanny ability no matter the cartridge fitted, to reduce every snare drum in the world to sounding just like a soggy cardboard box.
 
McIntosh MA6900 I bought after owning their big brother , just didn't do for me , funnily I went for MA2275 straight after and it's the longest serving amplifier I ever owned .
 
Never heard Kabers sound thin and nasty so something was wrong with the speakers, the amp, the source or the positioning.
 
I do not look at hifi mags nowadays, but I often find myself disagreeing with prevailing forum favourites and received forum wisdom, e.g.
Quad 57s.... Hated them, even though I'd loved 988s before.
Tannoy Turnberry SE - hated them.
Shahinian Obelisks - didn't hate them, just completely underwhelmed.
Stax headphones.... Don't get them at all.
 
I tended to find the opposite, e.g. I liked a lot of kit the magazines of the 1980s hated and slagged off! I’ve been interested in audio for 40 years now and very little of that has had anything to do with buying current kit, so really the magazines are an irrelevance to me, though I notice now many reviewers seem to like or even own much of the classic/vintage kit I like and use these days. There has been a great levelling/democratisation in recent decades and the ability of the industry to feed people flavour of the month hype is now thankfully vastly reduced. The punter is now far more informed and has decades of kit to make a choice from with unbiased views and support information etc now being firmly in the public domain.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
I recall being shocked at how bad I thought the AR18's were after reading so many "budget best buy" reviews at the time...
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That really surprises me! I always liked them a lot, one of the great budget speakers, and one that is genuinely a ‘bookshelf’ speaker, i.e. that is where they sound good. The preceding AR range, the AR6 etc, were nicer with real veneer cabs rather than the vinyl-wrap crap and I think sounded rather better as a result, but the 18s were great for an entry-level speaker with a big bold punchy sound. Trevor Horn’s speaker of choice for mix-down, so all the ZTT label stuff was done that way!

The 8” paper driver in a sealed box is another genre sadly consigned to history. I’d take a pair over a lot of todays small plastic-driver ported MDF boxes for sure.

PS This isn’t failing audio memories either, Rob played me a set of 18s he’d refoamed a couple of years back and they had exactly the big, bold, punchy sound I remembered. A great fun speaker.
 
That Nytech amplifier with sliding volume control. People still rave on about it; mine kept breaking down and was in for repairs more often than being used for amplifying purposes. I gave it away to a friend and it blew up when she was using it during a party.
 
Joe Hutch said:
That Nytech amplifier with sliding volume control. People still rave on about it; mine kept breaking down and was in for repairs more often than being used for amplifying purposes. I gave it away to a friend and it blew up when she was using it during a party.
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Fair comment. Similar vein to the original Cambridge Audio. Or as we knew them, 'Cambridge Audio Bang!' Capable of sounding very decent, but typically not for very long.
 
Joe Hutch said:
That Nytech amplifier with sliding volume control. People still rave on about it; mine kept breaking down and was in for repairs more often than being used for amplifying purposes. I gave it away to a friend and it blew up when she was using it during a party.
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I remember going into a hi-fi shop (may well have been WA Brady’s on Smithdiwn Rd, can’t remember) and seeing a big stack of them piled up apparently all awaiting repair! I was lucky in my amp of that era before moving onto Naim was an Onix OA21 and they were very reliable (I’ve got one here on the subs bench that still works fine despite never visibly having been serviced at all). Reliability and build-quality really helps sort the audio classics from the also-rans.
 
Tony L said:
That really surprises me! I always liked them a lot, one of the great budget speakers, and one that is genuinely a ‘bookshelf’ speaker, i.e. that is where they sound good. The preceding AR range, the AR6 etc, were nicer with real veneer cabs rather than the vinyl-wrap crap and I think sounded rather better as a result, but the 18s were great for an entry-level speaker with a big bold punchy sound. Trevor Horn’s speaker of choice for mix-down, so all the ZTT label stuff was done that way!

The 8” paper driver in a sealed box is another genre sadly consigned to history. I’d take a pair over a lot of todays small plastic-driver ported MDF boxes for sure.

PS This isn’t failing audio memories either, Rob played me a set of 18s he’d refoamed a couple of years back and they had exactly the big, bold, punchy sound I remembered. A great fun speaker.
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It was in a hi fi shop, with a budget amp and turntable of the day (about 1981) when I had a demo of them, so it's very possible I "heard them on a bad day" but they sounded very coloured to me and with a tweeter that was far from subtle...
 
Arkless Electronics said:
It was in a hi fi shop, with a budget amp and turntable of the day (about 1981) when I had a demo of them, so it's very possible I "heard them on a bad day" but they sounded very coloured to me and with a tweeter that was far from subtle...
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I find so much of this stuff sounds so much better now fed with a high-quality digital source rather than the cheap often plastic turntables of the era that were seldom properly sited. Rob’s pair certainly sounded superb, and another friend has a pair of AR6 driven with a early Sugden A21 and again they sound great. Ed Villchur really knew what he was doing!

PS The tweeter is surprisingly good, it crosses to the mid very well and whilst it may not be the last word in extension it does nothing obviously wrong. It was common to most ARs for a long period.
 
Hate is too strong a word, but utterly underwhelmed by Mission Cyrus gear, the Pink Triangle turntable and the Linn Karik/Numerik thing. Also don't like Rogers LS3/5As or NAD amps that much.

PS The fishes are slipping, 6 replies before Naim were slagged off :)
 
Funnily enough I’ve owned Dyn 52Ses, a Nad 3020 and a Marantz 63ki and completely agree with what’s already been said up thread.

I did really enjoy the Naim and ES14s though.
 
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