Which components knocked you out on first listen?

It was a Stax Class A with 45 watts per channel. I had heard the DQ10 many times before but never like that. The speakers finally lived up to the articles I was reading. And just for the record I had an SAE 4C for a long time. I no longer own the SAE but it still doing daily duty.

Proac response 2.5's driven with sonic frontiers power 3's...wow, the image they created was 3 dimensional, for real, it was like you could walk around the saxophonist and he had physicality to him!! not to mention the amazing bass for such an unassuming speaker

Totem modle 1's driven by cary triods...i have yet to hear diana krall sound better, on any system

Wilson Grand Slamms with Krell FPB 600...that was an eye opener on how good audio can get, yet you'd expect it to be good cause it costs 100x what the totem/cary system cost.

in that sense i was much more floored by the other two systems.

The system that first knocked me out as a novice was at a Legacy Audio road show. They had the Whispers being driven by their high current amp. It was at that time that I publicly vowed to somehow - someday buy a system that could, again, emotionally move me to tears. After the journey began and I learned more about audio, my taste evolved. The system that first knocked me out since the acquisition of audio experience and knowledge was this:

Levinson 390S
Levinson 33H monos
Revel Salons

And it is this system that I currently own as a result of that experience. Needless to say, it moves me everytime I hear it.

Elite dv47ai...first time I heard multichannel sacd. The rest of the system is 49txi, jmlab electra, parasound.

My 1st official KO came in December 2001 when Gayle Martin Sanders of Martin-Logan was touring showing off his Statement E2 electrostatics.
These speakers were driven by all-Krell electronics & cabling was MIT everywhere. I don't remember the Krell model #s except that the FPB-600C monos were driving the Statement E2s.
I had auditioned a # of M-L speakers for my home but just could not get to like them. Neither am I a Krell fan for various reasons.
However, what this Krell-Statement system did was pure sonic nirvana! The immediacy, the transparency, the purity of timbre, the feeling that I was sitting at the venue of the music event, the sheer power, the nimbleness of the amp-speaker combination to reveal all the nuances was just over-whelming & awe-inspiring. On the effects side - the bass was truely moving (pun intended) as all items not securely bolted to the wall or floor rattled & moved when Gayle Sanders played a certain church organ recording & those bass notes went 20Hz & below!
I've been to a few dealerships & been impressed but this experience was a total KO!