Decisive moments your your audio journey

Great post, OP. Enjoyed reading these interesting stories. 
 

Like everyone on here, it’s an incremental journey. There have been seminal experiences and some good rigs thru the years. But the latest increment was, on a whim, buying a pair of ESL63’s three years ago.  Had to sign up on AGon to buy them. Got them home, hooked them up, and my jaw dropped. I never imagined recorded music could sound like this.  

1) The first time I heard electrostatic speakers: they were KLH 9's.  I was still in college. 

2) The first time I heard a Direct to Disc record: it was Lincoln Mayorga " The missing Link."  At the time I believed all records were very high quality.  As soon as I heard that Sheffield Lab recording, I knew that most of my records were crap. 

In 2002 I and a friend of mine a couple time a week visiting different audiophiles homes and listened different systems.
On day we visited a man who had a strange system with Lowther PM4 in Oris 150 horns and 15 inch EV mid-bass woofers plus subwoofer. Lowethers were driven by Bottlehead 2a3 SET monoblocks. When we listened this setup we can believe what such sound is possible. All other systems we had listened before sounded like toy boomboxes compared to this system.
We were like a medieval knights who suddenly saw modern combat aircrafts and tanks.
Since then the direction I choose in audio is high sensitive speakers with SET amplification.

During college in the late 70s, I heard the original B&W 801s in an independent hi fi store in New Brunswick, NJ (Tech Hi Fi?).

Early 70's, when I heard pop's double KLH-9 setup with ARC electronics.

Late 70's, my double Large Advent setup with Advent 300 pre and GAS Ampzilla.

Mid 80's, my Acoustat 1+1s, RHLabs sub, monoblock Hafler DH220s and ARC SP3a

Late 90's, pop's B&W Matrix 800s with Jadis MC80 pre, Defy7 amp, VPI TNT with SMEV and Audio Quest cartridge.

2020, upgrading my system with and ARC SP11 mk2, VS110 and Marrow cables.