What started you on the path to being audionut?


I was 14 and visited by 26 year old neighbor. Went to his room. He fired up his Thorens table with some Chicago running through a Carver preamp/cube amp into Heresy horn speakers.
At the time this was leaps and bounds better versus anything else I heard. I was hooked from that moment.

He also played trumpet in a Chicago tribute band. I use to sit outside on my mom's front steps listening to his band practice as the music flowed out from the open, cellar hatchway doors.
pdspecl
My parents went shopping for a console in the 1960s. (They settled on a Magnavox.) While shopping, they asked the salesman about some components on a shelf in the corner of the store, and they were told they were very expensive but sounded good. This piqued my curiosity.

In high school, I had to walk past an audio store. I went in and eventually bought a cheap Fisher 3 piece combo system (turntable mounted on top of the receiver) which I thought was much better than our Magnavox.

In college, a lot of guys had much better stuff in their rooms, and I learned a lot more about good sound. By the time I graduated, I had collected a decent system and the bug was in my blood.

My pride and joy were my Rectilinear 3 highboys. But years later when I read a column by Julian Hirsch about how modern speakers had surpassed them, I started upgrading again. Like I replaced the Rectilinear 3s with Thiel 3.6s and then with Wilson W/P 6s. etc etc.
Back around 73-76 I was a teenager ,and had met older guys coming back from the service with some very nice systems . I was hooked on getting a better system ever since.
It was 1977-78 I was 13 years old and I walked into my Sister's much older boyfriend's condo, and there was a whole McIntosh system complete with all the goodies, tuner included. McIntosh XR7 speakers and top of the line Sony TT with a Tandberg cassette recorder. The lights on all the components at night were incredible.Everything was sitting on a really wide and low chrome and glass rack. Prior to that day I thought Pioneer was High-Fi.(lol) Today I own a McIntosh MC352 stereo amplifier. (go Figure)
"Jameswei: My pride and joy were my Rectilinear 3 highboys. But years later when I read a column by Julian Hirsch about how modern speakers had surpassed them, I started upgrading again."

My pride and joy were my Rectilinear 3A's. I read the same article by Julian Hirsch and traded them in for something different. I still wish I had kept them as I truly loved their sound.