What was your first big eye opener with regard to audio?

My life changing moments:

1.) Infinity WTLC (after the Servo Static and before the EMITs, used a Walsh tweeter) , Phase linear electronics. The system that started it all, it demonstrated to me that stereos could make a 3D soundstage. Soundstage has been my overriding need ever since.

2.) Audio Research D-79b, SP-6b, Acoustat 2+2 speakers, LINN table. The first system to open my ears to what high end was truly capable of.

3.) Magnapan Tympani I speakers, Mark Levinson ML-2 and ML-1 amp/pre, Goldmund table. Perhaps the single best system I have ever heard, and I have heard the Infinity I.R.S. system at P.S.Audio. It has so weighed on my psyche, I heard it around 1981, that I have since purchased a used pair of ML-2 amplifiers. They are as great as I remember.

4.) My first single ended triode amp. My first build, it uses the 45 triode. It taught me that everything I thought I knew about hi-fi was wrong, or at least over hyped. I now have three in a tri-amped home built Altec horn system. That speaker turned out so well it caused me to buy those Levinson amps for my Sound Lab electrostatics. This system also taught me that equipment doesn’t have to be commercial to be really good.

5.) Lampizator DACs. First a Big 6, followed by a Big 7. Lampizator DACs are indeed different. All of the analog stage is tubed. My Big 7, I loved the Big 6 but I wanted DSD capability, uses an R2R ladder DAC (not a chip) for the PCM decoding, and a separate filter (not a DAC chip) for the DSD decoding. It also uses a tube rectifier and directly heated triode tubes in the output. You can roll the tubes, my preference is for the 300b. There are no chips or op-amps in the signal path. They have turned digital into my preferred source, especially DSD.

When I bought a pair of Koss ESP-9 electrostatic headphones 45 years ago (about 1974) when I was a teenager. I was driving them with my Crown DC-300! I felt like I was hearing the future of audio. Unfortunately for all of us living in the future, headphones got worse, not better. Even my Stax 009 just don’t quite have the magic and power that the Koss ESP-9 had. Or at least, I don’t think they do.

They lasted for many years, until one of the ear cushions split open and the silicon fluid oozed out. The end.

I remember. 35 years ago my audioshop lent me a set of loudspeaker cables. “Here, try this. Let me know what you think”. It made me listen to my cd collection in a whole new way. Why did I never hear these little background sounds before? I was a starting audiophile (without the money though) so my system, for a 20 year old, was not all that bad but cables was not a thing in my mind then. It has been ever since.

And no, I do not know the science behind it. What I do know is that I hear a difference. And I do know that, after 35 years, putting it down as ‘it is just bias’ is pure ignorance.

First good experience was hearing Blood on the Tracks played via a Rega/Mordaunt Short bookshelf system way back in ‘83 - oh how I scoffed when someone said student days were the best! It wasn’t exactly realistic (not enough low end for a start) but it was far better in terms of space, depth, detail and separation (if not tonal richness) than anything I’d heard before.

Worst experience was in the following decades with the dawning realisation that 90% of what was written in UK magazines was partisan backslapping bullshit. Worse was the discovery that this industry is plagued with parasites.

The so-called upgrade ladder whilst promising much actually delivered precious little, especially after my upgrade to reasonably full bandwidth loudspeakers. 

Still, everyone must try to ‘earn’ a living somehow someway I guess. 

Getting a pair of Technics SB-C700 and comparing them with my YG Hailey and Avalon Eidolon Diamond.