What hooked you to audio?

HOT women standing in front of complicated looking gear in Playboy. Frankly, this is no joke. Fortunately, spinning an LP amplified by a Marantz 8B via lamp cord into JBL 2 way horns was an incredibly startling experience to everybody who heard the system for the first time.

At first they all laughed at the sight of the listening position lounger right up to that moment when the music began and the wonder of the stereo sound stage came to life for the first time in their Peanut Gallery brains. Unfortunately, as a surf rat turning hippie there was no confusing me with the suave Playboy member type in the magazine.

What hooked me? The music, the sound of the recordings, and realizing there was something better out there than low end consumer audio ie rack systems. A system that can extract much more out of the recording and present it in at least somewhat (depending on the reocrding) realistic manner.

The music was first, throughout early 60's. HiFi appreciation came in 1969 when I heard a system consisting of: AR XA Turntable, Dynaudio PAS-3 pre, Dynaudio ST-70 amp, AR 3a Speakers. It seemed magical.

I'm a music/color synesthete. The better the fidelity, the more understandable and visceral are the synesthetic connections.

All through HS I would walk by the local Olson Electronics store and, with no money in my pocket, would stare at and lust after all the cool stuff in the window. For some reason it was the headphones that I lusted after the most; especially the real big ones with the big puffy ear-pads. Finally, with enough paper route money, I bought those big puffy headphones and had my first personal stereo. I bought a headphone extension cord and plugged the cans into the family Sears "Sivertone" all-in-one and with the 'phones spread apart really wide and reaching all the way to my bedroom would blast them and USE THEM AS SPEAKERS!!!! Talk about distortion! But, man, I was in heaven listening to the sounds Joe Cocker, John Mayall and Mozart.

When I finally got some real money together I bought a Panasonic "Thrusters" system for $199. My excitement was dampened when it became obvious that although the system sounded "better" than the "Silvertone", the turntable had very audible wow. I returned the thing to the Korvettes dept. store three times before the salesman, who had no idea what I was talking about, finally insisted that I take my money back. The following year, while a freshman in college, I visited Peter McGrath's "Sound Components" in Coral Gables Fla. and heard (I will never forget it!) the system that would get me hooked once and for all: stacked Quads, Janis subs, Sequerra ribbons, Levinson electronics and Linn tt. playing Steely Dan's "The Royal Scam". Life would not be the same after that :-)