Do You Regret Your Pre-ASR Audio Gear Choices of the past?

[RalphB]

I certainly do. Same goes for bad wine.

Gave up lugging glass bottles whenever possible a few years back. Being old and owning a motorcycle but no car was the decider for me.

(Nowadays I decant it into a bottle before drinking tho....It's waay too easy to consume more than intended otherwise!)

Maybe the same goes for our obsession with audio. Sometimes I prefer to listen to a cheap bass heavy speaker.

 

[AaronJ]

This is an interesting question. I think I would regret the decisions if I hadn't purchased used. I have to forgive myself for doing what I thought was best at the time. I will admit to being seduced by the showroom sound of Bowers & Wilkins 15 years ago and also being influenced by some YouTube personalities. I discovered ASR around 2022, and the FUD is gone.

 

[JayGilb]

No regrets here. I have a mix of vintage gear combined with digital crossover DIY speakers. Many here would freak out at an amp that puts out .5% distortion at full power, but I have never been able to detect any distortion.

 

[RalphB]

This is an interesting question. I think I would regret the decisions if I hadn't purchased used. I have to forgive myself for doing what I thought was best at the time. I will admit to being seduced by the showroom sound of Bowers & Wilkins 15 years ago and also being influenced by some YouTube personalities. I discovered ASR around 2022, and the FUD is gone.

Very true in my case also.

 

[RalphB]

Never regret a lesson learned.

 

[Iainohyeah]

I bought a Mission 778x mainly due to the good reviews but the price was attractive for what it was (about £600 new in the UK) and I've always been fond of Mission/Cyrus products.
It's hard to fault and does everything you could reasonably want an integrated to do but I just felt something was off.
Having bought two Aiyima A07 Max amps based on the reviews and discussions here I tried an experiment and used the Mission as a preamp with the A07s as monoblock power amps.

Huge improvement in overall sound quality! Really, noticeably better in every aspect, using cheap amps you will not see reviewed in the mainstream hifi press. I paid less than £200 for the pair.

So, do I regret buying the Mission? Probably not as much as other purchases (Roksan, Rega, I'm looking at you) as it is a fantastic DAC/preamp, but I now think very differently about reviews and hyperbole.

 

[Steve H]

A common theme here on ASR is how many feel they managed to escape the ideas that drive the purchases of many other audiophiles. Getting rid of the woo-woo, no more being influenced by golden ear reviewers, getting off the gear merry-go-round, and finally making more knowledgable decisions that have led to their current system.

So my question to the crowd is:

How do you view your “ pre-ASR life?” (and perhaps your own more “objective” views predate ASR).

Do you regret much of the gear that you owned in your past audiophile journey?

Do you look back on it as a waste of time and money?

(my quick answer: no not at all. But I’m curious about others)

Matt, I watched an Audiophile Forum presentation in April with noted amplifier designer John Curl. He talked about a piece of equipment he designed in 1973 or 1974 that measured well and sounded bad. Then he took it to Tektronix and it measured badly. So, if he had brought it to me to measure, I would have given him the same answer as a 19 or 20 year old kid. since Tektronix engineers trained me in audio.

I’ve always been on the objective side. It was great fun to use an AP Analyzer when it came out in the eighties.

 

[RalphB]

No regrets because I enjoyed my old equipment a lot. Also, stuff looked pretty cool. The Carver amps and bose 901's. I'm new to this forum but already have a better idea what to look and listen for. Many thanks to all.

I look at my past purchases as a journey that has increased my appreciation for what I have. I don't poo poo the advice of most subscribers...just the opposite. The problem I have is separating the wheat from the chaff. I just take advice from sales people with a grain of salt.

 

[SteveC]

Yeah, that’s where I think I saved a lot of regrets too.




I have had an OPPO UDP-203 4K Ultra HD player pretty much sitting in its box since 2016 !!

I got it because my JVC projector is 4K capable, but the problem is it would take rewiring some cables through my walls and basement floors and all that to update to 4K/UHD capable HDMI cabling. And since it’s a really long run that puts extra strains on the cable. And for years people, I’ve been having trouble with cable run, so I’ve been waiting for things to shake out. The whole idea just became such a hassle I kept putting it off. In the meantime, I even bought a Lumagen pro radio processor that will help process HDR for my projector, but even that has unused for quite a while because I’ve not gotten to the cabling yet. (discretionary spending to go towards audio stuff).

Anyway, I know that having folded the OPPO 4K players are highly coveted for various reasons in the Home Theatre world. But I’m amazed how the price keeps going up and up.

I just took a look, and these things are now going from between $2000-$6000 dollars on the market!

​

My Oppo 105 is still going strong after, what, must be about 8 years. I do worry that it will be irreplaceable if it ever dies. Pretty sure it won't be repairable if it ever does fail. In any case, one of my better audio purchases!

 

[MattHooper]

My Oppo 105 is still going strong after, what, must be about 8 years. I do worry that it will be irreplaceable if it ever dies. Pretty sure it won't be repairable if it ever does fail. In any case, one of my better audio purchases!

My Oppo 1080p blu-ray player is still going strong. And as a matter of fact, so is my Toshiba HD-DVD player! I bet early on HD DVD and clearly lost that bet. But since I still have a whole bunch of HD DVD movies I keep the player around.

 

[Subob]

No regrets, mainly because I've never been made of money, so all of my hifi gear has been very much budget, in for the long term, and I've enjoyed it all.

Very soon after getting into DAP's and headphones/iems, I was off to Canjam and that helped me decide for myself on most of my portable gear. Nothing quite beats an audition! It also revealed quite clearly that more expensive doesn't always equal 'better'. It also taught me that graphs and measurements aren't everything either.

I like ASR, but I also like the other place, too. I sit somewhere in the middle between the two extremes and appreciate the knowledge and enjoyment I get from both.

 

[antisuck]

I was pretty fortunate in that my speakers of the past 15 years (DIY pair of Mark K's ER18DXT) turn out to still be fairly well-regarded for that general type of speaker (6-1/2" 2-way bookshelf), and align with the value ASR followers tend to place in smooth frequency response and smoothly-controlled directivity. Go me! My budget was historically more limited, so no particular regrets there. I'm certainly glad this place exists as I consider where to go moving forward.

The bummer is, I'm finding I'll need to spend a decent chunk of change to get a meaningful upgrade while maintaining the positive attributes I already enjoy. :/ Perhaps AsciLab will jump in with the passive 3-way towers of my dreams. Or they will put enough pressure on the market that someone else does it at a sensible (for me) price point.

 

[tengiz]

My regret has nothing to do with equipment purchases - at least not generally. I’ve been pretty sane in that respect for a long time. That said, I’d had a phase when I would chase various models of ICEPower modules to build DIY amps for electrostatic speakers, which turned out to be a poor match.

But the one thing I absolutely overlooked was the "house curve." I always just assumed that flat was the way to go.

Part of it was that I thought that kind of curve - with elevated bass and a gentle downward slope toward the highs - was more suitable for anything but classical, jazz, or similarly balanced acoustic material. So I never gave it serious consideration.

After a few discussions here - where people pointed out that my measurements looked "thin" in the bass region (no elevation in the bass-midbass, and no gentle downward slope as frequency increased) - I finally decided to give it a try.

And to my surprise, the difference was immediately apparent - not the biggest change I’ve made through electronic correction, but certainly one I didn’t see coming.

 

[tengiz]

My Oppo 105 is still going strong after, what, must be about 8 years. I do worry that it will be irreplaceable if it ever dies. Pretty sure it won't be repairable if it ever does fail. In any case, one of my better audio purchases!

I stopped using it years ago - the Sony UBP-X800M and later the UBP-X800M2 replaced it just fine. They play multichannel SACDs and DVD-Audio discs, along with the usual current physical media. I can't rip SACDs with them, but I don't sweat that anymore. The UI isn't as polished as Oppo's, but it's good enough.

The Oppo 105, with its older implementation of HDMI CEC, is - for some reason - incompatible with more modern equipment. It's not just that it doesn't work; it actually interferes with communication between other components.

 

[PristineSound]

My Oppo 105 is still going strong after, what, must be about 8 years. I do worry that it will be irreplaceable if it ever dies. Pretty sure it won't be repairable if it ever does fail. In any case, one of my better audio purchases!

I own the 105D. There are no more parts left in the US.

 

[Sal1950]

I was pretty fortunate in that my speakers of the past 15 years (DIY pair of Mark K's ER18DXT) turn out to still be fairly well-regarded for that general type of speaker (6-1/2" 2-way bookshelf), and align with the value ASR followers tend to place in smooth frequency response and smoothly-controlled directivity. Go me! My budget was historically more limited, so no particular regrets there. I'm certainly glad this place exists as I consider where to go moving forward.

The bummer is, I'm finding I'll need to spend a decent chunk of change to get a meaningful upgrade while maintaining the positive attributes I already enjoy. :/ Perhaps AsciLab will jump in with the passive 3-way towers of my dreams. Or they will put enough pressure on the market that someone else does it at a sensible (for me) price point.

Have you added a quality subwoofer, crossover, and DRC for the sub?
You might find you'll be satisfied with that.
Then later if your still not happy, the sub and stuff will still be a valuable addition even to large towers.

 

[Sal1950]

I own the 105D. There are no more parts left in the US.

Time has passed by the Oppo's and it's a bit silly to spend any money on them for repairs.
The UDP 205 biggest claim to fame was it's excellent ES9038Pro chip and outstanding measurements.
Sadly its only a 7.1 channel DAC so if your looking to do modern audio/video Atmos or Auro, etc ; it's now obsolete.
The only other Oppo @amirm measured was a 105 and it appeared to have something wrong with it.
Let the hate begin.

 

[antisuck]

Have you added a quality subwoofer, crossover, and DRC for the sub?
You might find you'll be satisfied with that.
Then later if your still not happy, the sub and stuff will still be a valuable addition even to large towers.

I have, thanks for asking. (Well, Yamaha YPAO plus a tweak or two for personal preference, so limited.)

 

[beeface]

Do you regret much of the gear that you owned in your past audiophile journey?

Do you look back on it as a waste of time and money?

Yes, and;

yes.

 

[MattHooper]

Yes, and;

yes.

Sorry to hear it.

Do you mind mentioning any of the gear that you regret?

Did you get no enjoyment out of it whatsoever?