How Did Your First Audiophile Experience Impact Your Audio Journey?

Three quick stories…

In the 60s my folks had the requisite Sears console stereo. Big hunk of wood. One day at 12-13 years old I plopped down on the floor and happened to be centered between the two speakers. A Tijuana Brass album was playing (probably Whipped Cream And Other Delights - frequently on the Jr HS boys’ playlist. 😉) At the end of one track the trumpet ping-ponged from side to side. Whoa!  That was cool!

Graduating HS my folks gave me a pair of B&O 2 way sealed bookshelf speakers, I guess because I was headed off to music school. I bought a used 60s Fisher combo, hooked up to a Garrard TT with whatever “needle” came with it. Bass!  Who knew??

In college, the drummer in a band I was in had a relative who was a Klipsch dealer. He’d bought a pair of Cornwalls. I was at his house shortly after he’d unboxed them and he’d hooked one up to an Onkyo something-or-other and a TT. He put on a Pentangle album with just a female singer and acoustic guitar. It sounded like she was there, inside the speaker, playing and singing. I was dumbfounded. And hooked. 

Took recording and mixing later on to understand about imaging and soundstage. 

Now, one of my favorite things is to have friends over to hear my Sound Lab M1s driven by an MC352. Their jaws literally drop. 

… and echoing a previous post, it’s beyond me why every musician isn’t an audio enthusiast. But I’m constantly amazed at the equipment some truly world class musicians listen to music on. A boom box would be an upgrade.  One respected jazz piano player I’ve worked with for 30 years goes so far as to wonder why I would spend my money on this stuff. 🤔

My first gobsmack moment was hearing a K-Horn mono tube system around 1959 in a large room playing X-MAS music and popular vocalists of the time.

My second GS moment was hearing 2 K-Horns in stereo (same room) the following year (think we were invited over for an impromptu indoor Halloween party as it had started raining around dinner time and it was cold).

I don't remember exactly what my parents played music on @ the time, but I do recall a foreign short wave radio and I had a Red/Yellow Tiny Tim crystal radio with an ear plug (still have it).

DeKay

Freshman year of college. Enhanced. Lady Land. Thorens 125 (?) S.M.E. arm, a Shure cartridge. Mac tube pre-amp with a 275 and a pair of VOT A7s. It was the beginning of a glorious journey!

1982 - definitive audio, north seattle. forgot what brand of refrigerator-sized class A monoblock amps [doubled as room heaters] powering [barely] a giant pair of magnepan tympani III speakers that dominated one wall of the [acoustically perfect] acoustically treated listening room. a direct-to-disc recording [this was before CDs] of a bach organ piece recorded in some big church in SoCal [garden grove?]. simply magisterial. the whole room [aurally/psycho-acoustically] became that cathedral. funny thing was the record disc surface noise seemed to float in mid-air about 3-6 feet in front of the speakers, in an almost palpable cloud of coarse hiss, while the music seemed behind and beside the speaker panels. btw i've never gotten to hear an actual "silent groove" in any LP, there is ALWAYS some noise there. i would have loved to hear some rock on those speakers. it made me invest on the spot, on their baby brothers, the SMGs. 

Always wanting more