What started you on the merry go round?

This could almost be a synthesis of many of the above experiences. In junior-high and high school, I could only drool over the pictures and descriptions in magazines of japanese top-line Kenwood or H/K gear while I worked to save for college and told myself that my Soundesign one-piece with one-way speakers (with fake chrome ring to make them look two-way) was adequate.

College is where "it" happened in stages. My future best friend and roommate had a mediocre component system with a H/K xm400 cassette deck. We were both amazed that with frequent adjustment, the deck would duplicate LP sound to the limits of the rest of the system. After meeting my future wife, we decided to invest in a decent sound system that we would share between my and her apartments. I still remember "it" occurring at a small shop run by one man, who put Cat Stevens' "Longer Boats" through a set of Sound Source speakers (made in Cuthbert, Georgia, in the early '80's) at high volume without any degradation of sound. Amazing. We were simply accustomed to highly distorted Led Zep or Rush or Neil Young (who already sounded highly distorted anyway) blasting away in some sofa-equipped basement to that point.

The obsession actually seeped in throughout my early adulthood-- sitting with friends and dates in whomever's living room (or whatever you call the front room of an apartment), socializing and introducing each other to whatever we were discovering at the time. This always involved placing an LP on a turntable, hitting it with the ubiquitous Discwasher, then mutual anticipation at the needle drop. A mixdown of the latest favorites on metal cassette was the medium of gift exchange among my friends, male and female. None of us watched television. This ritual and intentional focus has been lost in the digital age...

Music has always had a crucially supportive role in my life, but as I got busy with grad school and family, I acquiesced to the convenience of plugging a CD changer into the "aux" input of my trusty preamp and allowing the trusty old system to provide a backdrop.

In my attempt to regain that sense of deliberate anticipation, I have gone back to analog over the past few years. I now own nine or ten vintage decks bought for pennies on the dollar, plus associated vintage electronics and refoamed classic loudspeakers, and am saving for a real, modern, off-the-merry-go-round stopper system. I am hoping to infect others, including my children, by gifting them an entire system whenever they show a real interest. Until then, I achieve "it" whenever I place a classic LP bought at one of my local thrift stores for $1 or less and cleaned by my new ritual of Orbitrac followed by VPI 16.5, pour a glass of cabernet, and enjoy the snap, crackle, and pop through a 25-year-old system (with modern cartridge) that I could only dream about back then...

Merry go Round was the wrong way to put it, I meant it in contrast to the heartfelt plea of getting off the darned thing. Amazing how many of us have a similar pattern, starting out in teens or at college, single, but poor, which has it's own set of problems. A long hiatus building a career and family. Restarting with more money, but for many of us, a partner to keep happy, a whole shed load of problems. How many of us have extolled the looks of say an ARC CD3, in my case, the simple, clean lines, industrial look. What do you get, a whithering look and "No"... sigh. No room for discussion, adult interaction, give and take, just No.

A friend who had Thiel CS 0.5, Bryston 2 series preamp and power amp.

That alone was so much better than my mass market Pioneer receiver, Technics CD player, and cheap Infinity and Boston mini monitors.

That was 10 years ago.

1976 at a store called LaBelle's. They had a very impressive audio room at the time. There were these refrigerator sized Frazier speakers, a 350 wpc Phase Linear amp and autocorrelation preamp, Kenwood granite based turntable and who knows what kind of cartridge. They played Eagles, Blood Sweat and Tears, Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker and Earth Wind and Fire. It was like they were all in the room and I was obsessed even though I was a high school kid with very little money. I tried for a while to build my own monster speakers but was never satisfied with the results. A couple of years later, I spent the previous years savings on a system with some Bose 901s, a Kenwood integrated amp, a Yamaha turntable and an Ortofon cartridge.

Don_s comment on the Large Advents is like my own. I had decided to buy a pair but walked in to hear the Infinity ServoStatic Ones playing. Had to have them.