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the gateway product that turned you into an audiophile

@foggyus91 suggested/pushed/encouraged me to start a thread about this. It was related to Darko's post about 12 audiophile misconceptions. One was that we are all about music - vs gear. I think that subject has been chewed up already a 100 times. I am not sure anyone has anything new to say. 

However, that made me think about the day I turned into an audiophile.

It was when I bought my first "gateway" product that was affordable but audiophile quality and led me to explore more and tweak and switch and experiment and never be fully content but always be smiling when I turned the power on. It's been about the sound and not the music and that's fine. But I realize now that those Monitor Audio speakers I bought from craigslist were my gateway drug  devil

Were you always an audiophile or was there such a moment and a piece of hardware that made the difference?

 

(Lastly, I am very uneasy and on the fence about this forum and starting a thread - for my last correspondence with the moderators. What I learned should bother anyone who cares about fairness or even the appearance of it. I can't discuss it because it will get removed - I tried, my comment lived for less than 5 minutes, )

 

gano
jji666
604 posts
 

BMW 545i.  The system in that car was better than my home system and I really hadn't realized what I was missing.  Took a few years to match it but of course now I've lapped that BMW several times over, but it's still a helluva fun thing to cruise around and rock out. 

kirksaudio's avatar
kirksaudio
1 posts
 

My first experience with "separates" was back in the early '80's. I was cruising around Jafco in Bellevue, WA and came across a used Phase Linear 3300 preamp sitting on a discount shelf. I didn't know anything about it, other than it looked cool. So I bought it. My "gateway" because now I needed an amp, speakers, turntable, interconects, quality speaker cables, etc. with infinite upgrade possibilities! Little did I know then that the beginning of my journey started with a product from a local guy named Bob Carver, who started Phase Linear, sold it, and started Carver Corp in 1979, and who didn't live too far from me.

 

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starman1962's avatar
starman1962
2 posts
 

Adcom separates, sometime in the 80’s.

mgrif104
419 posts
 

I grew up listening to classical music my dad played on his system which started out as AR 3a speakers driven by a Fisher receiver with a garrard turntable.. Sometime in the mid 70s, he graduated to a Mac receiver, ADS 420s and subwoofer and a Dual turntable. 

He then bought the ADS digital delay system which drove a pair of rear speakers. It certainly created the illusion of a more spacious environment but the effect was better on some recordings than others . My appetite was whetted.

In the early 80s, I bought a Denon integrated amp and matching tuner from Glenn Poor’s in Champaign, paired with ADS 410 speakers which I really liked. 

My roomate (I was in college) and I went in and bought a pair of used Ohm Fs. Where he found them, I’ve no idea. He also had the DBX 3Bx dynamic range expander. Another roomate had a Hafler amplifier which we drove with the preamp out of my integrated to power the Ohms. It sounded pretty remarkable even though the Hafler was woefully underpowered for the Ohms. Though my turntable was clearly a weak link (Harmon Kardon with an Ortofon cartridge), I can still remember listening to the finale of Shostakovich Symphony 5 in awe. I was hooked.

 

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