Is there any bad sounding high-end gear--?


I was reading the thread here today about biased reviewers-
it got me thinking, out of the stuff which is reviewed in the publications which serve the high-end arena, is there really any bad sounding gear?----I am talking about from what I call the golden era of High-end, 1990---2000, stuff from the major players like ARC, CJ, Krell, MLevinson, Jadis---etc-----I use this time frame as this was the pre-Chinese era when most gear was from the US, we also saw stuff from Italy, France and Swiss made stuff.

When I have purchased something and not liked it, I always struck it up to a system mismatch----

If anyone can provide what they bought and really thought it was terrible, I'd be interested to know what it was.
128x128justlisten
Martin Logans can sound excellent in their own way though I prefer different sound. I am surprised you didn't say that Soundlabs are garbage and that Lamm or Rowland are full of distortion. There are different opinions, and there is plain nonsense.
As prices of products go up, so does your level of expectation of what you get for you money. Personally,
I think any speaker over 25K is overpriced regardless
of the performance (unless the voice coil is solid gold).
Hey, it's just a speaker! However if you listened to the
Wilson or Sonus Faber speakers and they sounded bad, it
was probably due to a mismatch with the room or the
equipment they were using as both sound about as good
as speakers can sound in their price range.
Is there any bad sounding high-end gear--?

I'm sure there is,just like there's some great sounding low end gear.Just my opinion,nothing more.
What do you mean by bad sounding? Quite often, something sounds good to someone may sound bad to others. Audio is a very subjective hobby.
On the positive side of your question, try to find a CJ PV 12. My point is, the high value good stuff is well known. How long an item can last "for sale" on Audiogon speaks volumes in regard to your question.