advertisement


Top 5 Worst Sounding Integrated Amps

Incidentally, I have one of those sinclair amps - and the circuit diagram for it - if anyone wants to experience the dangerous side of hifi, I'd be happy to send for cost of postage and a video of any immolation.
 
Audiolab 8000A (the original one) - dull, dull, dull!

Pioneer A-400 - I never understood the fuss but I have one coming my way soon so maybe I’ll give it a second chance!

Rogers Ravensbourne. Another dreary thing

B&O Beomaster 4000 - stunning looks; disappointing sound. Given that its circuit is about 95% identical to other B&O units that sound superb, this is a mystery.

Sony TA-5650 - VFET magic supposedly. I thought the TA-3650 sounded better, personally!

Can't comment on the first 4 but the Sony, really? I think the 5650 you listened to must have been broke! I'm biased admittedly as I have one but frankly I'd put this in amongst the best integrated amps I've ever heard. Almost valve like in its presentation.
 
Can I write the Sansuii A(*#@$& 1010-SE whatever it was that had everyone shaving their pubes and pole dancing a few years ago? I just wanna see some spark fly! (never actually heard it).
 
Really fascinating thread! I've not had any really bad sounding amps, but my first integrated was a champagne coloured Marantz from the original Richer Sounds shop that What Hi-Fi were keen on back in 1984. I didn't realise how veiled it was until I upgraded it! I would say amps I've owned in nearly 40 years of boxswapping that I wouldn't recommend would be:

Mission Cyrus 1 (detailed but ultimately thin sounding),
MF A1 (sweet but bland, however my MF B200 is a real sleeper),
Stan Curtis Cambridge Audio P55 (strong sounding but surprisingly veiled)
all my various Pioneers (all a touch lifeless),
Naim Nait 5 (I've enjoyed most of the many Naims I've had, but this was not one of them),
Supernait 1 (it's good but easily beaten at its price - my MF B200 was as good),
Amptastic thingy (easily thrashed by the MF V90 amp that replaced it in my desktop system),
Unison Research Preludio (not bad, but not as good as it looks, nor for the price)
Copland CSA28 (nothing special but something about the sound occasionally irritated me)
Lavardin IS (or IT, cannot remember) though probably a speaker miss-match
Rogers E20A (looks great, sounds average)
 
I recall buying a used Exposure X from Reading HiFi in 1991. It sounded great with my little Royd A7s but the switch-on/off thump terrified me, and the level of hiss was too loud in my tiny room, so I returned it. Knobhead jobsworth in the shop refused me a refund (still angry about it, 30 yrs later..) so I came away with a new Audiolab 8000a and a pair of headphones. Not a great move but it sounded much better than the Intek I also listened too.

4 years later I replaced it with a Nait 3, which to my ears sounded pretty good with my LP12 and Elas.
 
Yes mine did that too. It was the first one with the stick-on silver logo and two black toggle switches, visible below. Amazing for such a product to be neither gravity nor electricity proof.

10756803844_e07e156b25_c.jpg


Ancient system pic from about 1986-8 or so. Xerxes, RB300, possibly a Stilton Audio MP11, Marantz CP230 cassette, QED tuner, 62/140, Gale 301s (which didn’t suit the crappy room, so were shortly replaced with Kan IIs, which did).

PS Such a dainty little record collection!

well my original version psu still working. I did though take off the top case, probably explains why
 
Rogers E20 & E40 - boring flat sound but Paid peanuts for them new Direct from the Rogers factory. I spoke to PQ about the amps years later (they were designed by Audio Note) and he agreed. I really don’t think he had much to do with it tbh.

Most Musical Fidelity amps from the late eighties/early 90’s - Unreliable, poorly built. My Marantz PM55 I kept as a backup was better than the majorityof the stuff MF was putting out around that time. It is good to see that they have moved along but I do wonder how many people they lost with their problems from that era.

Audiolab 8000a - A magazine favourite and better than the amps above but again just bland. Not the later variants either but the British built one. I remember going into dealers to listen to a Rotel cdp and being asked what amps the cdp was going to be used with and my friend said the 8000a and the dealer replied “ahh never mind”:p

Linn LK1&LK2 - someone earlier added a pre/pwr so this deserves a honourable mention. Crap. Boring. Lifeless. Should never have seen the light of day. Exchanged for a Quad 44/606 very quickly and to much relief.
 
Dealer tries his best to coax you into keeping a fantastic amplifier.

You insist that an Audiolab is best solution.

And he’s the Knobhead?

No, I don't insist the Audiolab is (was) the best solution. And no, he didn't try his best. He refused a perfectly reasonable request and lost a future customer. I couldn't live with the Exposure. For the same price the Audiolab was the best of the ones I listened to.
 
To me, most of the McIntosh solid state amps sound grainy and harsh but I’m not 100% sure if it’s the selling price or the sound that makes me want to turn them off...........
Their vacuum tubes amps sound very nice though.

You were correct to be turned off by both the sound and the price. I installed a lot of them, you must not have heard them through McInthosh speakers otherwise instead of turning them off you would have shot them with a shotgun so they'd never be turned on again. The louder they got - and they got loud, the more annoying, you'd think given their American Muscle reputation they would at least play loud decently. The modern tube stuff was worthy, I only got to play with those in the demo rooms, no one ever bought them, but then tube amps are like pizza, even a bad one is perfectly edible.
 
I was hugely underwhelmed by the following; Audiolab 8000A, Mission Cyrus 2 (with PSX), Musical Fidelity A1 and the Musical Fidelity A100. I demmed them all as a possible upgrade to my Nytech CA202 and they all sounded bland and lifeless, in the end I went home with a Naim amp.
I never liked the Linn Intek, either - despite it being designed by a friend, but that was the Linn "house sound" at the time - the pre and power amps weren't to my taste, either.
 
The A1 and, much less so A100, are not amongst my favourite MF designs (although their unreliability before rebuilding has helped pay the bills!).

A1 in particular rather coloured and sounds in many ways more valvey than many valve amps... which is I guess why some love them...

A100 especially after a rebuild and new, better, caps is much better and whilst it certainly shares the same characteristics as the A1 (it's the same design with better output transistors, bigger power supply and more power) it tends not to over-egg the valvey pudding as it were. It can sound very nice. Big, bold, with good imaging and soundstaging and a lack of edge and grit. If leading edge attack and carved from solid bass with uber detail is your thang then it ain't for you though.

The MA50 monoblocks were MF's real low point IMHO. They had many rave reviews as well! They were A1's in fact but with bigger mains transformers giving more power and hence they got even hotter and were even more unreliable than the A1! For the price of about four A1's you got two A1's with their pre amp sections not stuffed (what a rip off!) and their power amp sections connected in parallel to give twice the current and twice the damping factor of an A1... Yes this made them sound pretty good but OMG were they unreliable! The mains transformers used to melt! Kind of anyway... they got so hot the transformers failed when the insulation melted... we'd get them in with the usual clear tape around toroidal transformers melted onto the windings. Many a time we repaired them and fitted new mains transformers then left them on test overnight only to find them dead the next morning and a postmortem showing a repeat of the above... When this happened we would reduce the amount of class A, fix them again, and if they survived the night they would go back to the customer.
I seriously doubt there is single pair still working... not unless someone has rebuilt them with high quality temperature resistant parts and also reduced the power with a lower voltage TX and reduced the class A anyway
 
I probably don't have very discerning ears, but I've only had one amp I didn't get on with : MF Elektra E100. It had a strange top end that distorted on instruments like oboe and brass. As I was listening to a lot of Gabrielli at the time, that wasn't good !

I made the mistake of leaving it on whilst I left the room, and when I came back it had blown my rather lovely Rogers LS 6a speakers.

I tend not to learn from my mistakes. I found a tatty donor pair of 6as, fixed my pair and had the amp repaired by English Audio's repair man. A year or so later, it did it again. I wasn't best pleased. I still miss the Rogers.
 
Going to pile on the misery regarding The Pioneer A400- did not get that amplifier at all....:(, going to echo what a lot of folk have already said did not get the hype about this amplifier.

Jungson JA-88D Class A behemoth-See above.:(
 
Last edited:
Going to pile on the misery regarding The Pioneer A400- did not get that amplifier at all....:(, going to echo what a lot of folk have already said did not get the hype about this amplifier.

Seems to be getting a fair bit of hate on this thread. I’ve never heard one (I was a fair way up the Naim tree at the time), though I certainly remember the rave reviews. What is it folk don’t like? On paper it just looks like a fairly nice mid-level Japanese amp, I can’t see anything obvious to hate in the specs. Seems fairly powerful too so I’d have thought it could deal with the ports and heavy plastic drivers of the era.
 


advertisement


Back
Top