Highly praised hear you just didn’t care for?
Have you ever owned any gear that’s gotten universal or near universal praise that your ultimately just didn’t care for at all?
I once owned a Linn Troika cartridge. In the Linnosphere this is a highly regarded and dare I saw worshipped cartridge. Well, I bought one, and yes, midrange and above it was lovely but the cartridge, to my ears, was dynamically deficient. My next cartridge was a Linn Arkiv B which I found far more satisfactory.
All was not lost- I sold my Troika to someone who was thrilled to have a Troika. Actually sold it for more than I paid. I will say the Troika was a nice shade of red and was very easy to mount.
I still have a Sony ES 5400 SACD player that was supposedly the bee’s knees. Not. Grainy, dry high end. More detailed but far less musical than my decade older Cal Audio Labs Delta/Alpha combo. The drive mechanism is fine and it has a tank like build. But, my Yggdrasil just wipes the floor in all regards to the DAC in the Sony, with Red Book through the Yggdrasil sounding superior in all regards to SACD through the Sony. |
Very few regrets in this hobby, I wanted to try a single driver "wideband" speaker. Bought a pair of Omega Alnico Monitors. I fell out of love pretty fast. Didn't even own them 8 months before trying to sell them ...that took a few months too. I took a beating on those. Thought they were great at first but they struggled with some content and completely lost composure at louder volumes. Plus I really missed not having a tweeter. |
Luckily I demo all my gear before I purchase so I never had to eat the cost of an unwanted piece of equipment. Highly recommend this when possible. One piece of equipment I had that gets a lot of praise that I absolute hated was Nordost Frey power cabling. I tried it, Shunyata gamma, Analysis Plus cabling, and Cardas parsec power cabling. The Frey sounded so etched and weird in my system. Like it was adding detail that didn't exist and no one asked for. I'm sure they may synergize well in some systems but in mine they were an absolute NO. My system is very sensitive to cable changes and luckily for my wallet, I found the Cardas parsec to be the best in my system by a good margin. Dynamics, clarity and sense of realism are what I look for in my systems. |
@lanx0003 The ICON being compared to a reference level system of that cost/caliber is ridiculous. I had one for a couple of weeks. While I think it is a good one box solution for the money, the $6K Lumin T3X I ended up with completely blew it away. Not even close. No surprise either, obviously. But, if the NANO is close to the ICON, that's a real bargain for someone entering Hi-Fi/streaming. Now on to the OP's question (yet another survey): Roger's High-Fidelity EHF-200 Mk2. Crap amp, and worse Company. Getting rid of the Roger's and ending up with my T+A integrated was one of the happiest moments in my short "audiophile" journey. |
