Ok, as a professional musician, recording artist and college music professor (jazz saxophone and I’m also a symphony clarinetist) I’ll chime in. My system is always evolving but atm it consists of:
Harbeth C7es3’s
Croft Phono Integrated
Lumin T2
Technics SL1200m3d
my start in the hobby came in my junior year of music school at U of Miami. I started going in some of the Sound Advice stores that were still around in Florida in the 90’s and ventured into the more expensive rooms where I found B&W, Krell, Conrad Johnson and Apogee. I was immediately smitten, most notably with the combo of CJ and Apogee speakers. I remember bringing in some Keith Jarrett to play on that system and my tiny brain 🧠 was blown. From there I started to save some of my gig money to buy my first good system from Sound Advice which was Kef Ref 102/2 and all Adcom Separates. Served me well for many years.
i have found that a lot of musician friends have only heard high quality playback in a studio, at least until I invite them over and then usually they are hooked. I’ve converted a number of
jazz and classical musicians into audiophiles lol. There are exceptions of course. I think one would be music professors who usually have more resources and time for this hobby, and some of the more successful musicians in my field. When John Faddis came to be a guest artist at our music school a few years ago, he came over my house for a listening session as he wanted to hear my Tektons. He has some older top end B&W speakers and he also talked about Ron Carter’s system which is relatively high end but Faddis didn’t love the sound of it. I also have a few other accomplished musician friends who are audiophiles. I think once the audio bug bites us, sometimes we get pretty deep into it as we really value the realistic timbre of live instruments.
Harbeth C7es3’s
Croft Phono Integrated
Lumin T2
Technics SL1200m3d
my start in the hobby came in my junior year of music school at U of Miami. I started going in some of the Sound Advice stores that were still around in Florida in the 90’s and ventured into the more expensive rooms where I found B&W, Krell, Conrad Johnson and Apogee. I was immediately smitten, most notably with the combo of CJ and Apogee speakers. I remember bringing in some Keith Jarrett to play on that system and my tiny brain 🧠 was blown. From there I started to save some of my gig money to buy my first good system from Sound Advice which was Kef Ref 102/2 and all Adcom Separates. Served me well for many years.
i have found that a lot of musician friends have only heard high quality playback in a studio, at least until I invite them over and then usually they are hooked. I’ve converted a number of
jazz and classical musicians into audiophiles lol. There are exceptions of course. I think one would be music professors who usually have more resources and time for this hobby, and some of the more successful musicians in my field. When John Faddis came to be a guest artist at our music school a few years ago, he came over my house for a listening session as he wanted to hear my Tektons. He has some older top end B&W speakers and he also talked about Ron Carter’s system which is relatively high end but Faddis didn’t love the sound of it. I also have a few other accomplished musician friends who are audiophiles. I think once the audio bug bites us, sometimes we get pretty deep into it as we really value the realistic timbre of live instruments.