What made you become an 'audiophile'.

It was due to my Dad who was an audiophile. I used to make cassette tapes on his stereo from various LPs on a Teac dual bay deck. He had stuff like Bose and Yamaha speakers, Phase Linear and SAE electronics and a B&O and Philips turntable. The tapes really sounded great and I still have a few of them. I remember later being excited about my first car having a CD player. I wish my Dad was still alive and could hear my current system. He would get a kick out of it.

 

I liked playing dj as a kid, but hated the ****ty record player that needed a coin to track. Got my parent's cruddy Panasonic as a hand me down, but at least it didn't skip. Then in college, they gave me a nice dorm room Onkyo to go with the el cheapo Mulitech CD player I'd purchased.

Hmm, come to think of it, what made me an audiophile was going from a 25 hour a week, minimum wage job in high school to a $7.00 an hour, full time summer job in college. Disposable income, baby. Heck, I've only upgraded my primary system once since college. Who knows, if the girls had liked me better, it might never have happened.

 

A rainy saturday morning at Stuarts Audio in Scotch Plains, NJ back in 1978 with my dad. They dropped the needle on side one of Supertramp's Mobile Fidelity version of Crime of the Century, and my world was changed forever.

 

On a related note, I had a '69 Dodge Dart Swinger in the late 90s with the fabled 340 engine and 727 tranny. Unfortunately it was a money pit, so I had to sell it to pay the bills and rent. But that thing on a good day ran like a raped ape and really smoked the tires! Incidentally, I got my fair share of tickets, and car searches. Sheesh.

 

1965, 9 transistor radio. Wow great music, how do I make it sound better?

It's been downhill ever since.

 

you bet!

 

Just to add to this, once I got a turntable it was all over, I was hooked. I got my dream table in 1975 an Empire 698, still own it and still love it.

 

I discovered the dial on our old transistor radio in the 60s as a child. It sort of went from there.

 

( ( ( ( ( ((((((( .

That's rather simple; the increase of details in sound on one hand, and on the other, a higher disposable income! . ​

 

I'm sorry you feel that way. Seeing as it sets my curious mind off on music, how it could sound better and growing up with a house of sound over the years, it's a pretty direct lineage.

 

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Music lover vs the Audiophile. An Audiophile is a music lover who cares about the quality of the sound of the music he listens to. He wants the instruments to sound the way a live instrument would sound as well as the perception that the vocalist is right in front of them and the placement of the instrumentalists in the sound space matters. We care about how real something sounds. Music lovers just want to hear the music and tap their toes and sing along. They are also not inclined to spend much money on equipment to enhance their listening pleasure.

The problem Audiophiles have is the road to improvement never ends and one must learn when to jump off the tracks and just enjoy what you have. It needs to be more about the music and less about the gear or deep frustration will set in. There is always something better, or at least different, and one needs to know when to be satisfied. Most of the time what is not satisfying one Audiophile would be fine for another. We should not let this hobby be frustrating, but we often let it.

 

( ( ( ( ( ((((((( .

Thank you for your kind sympathy, but there's no need to feel sorry. Just see below​

I have nothing more to add!​

 

That's an inaccurate generalization or at best misleading. I am a Musicphile, if I can use that term, and spend more money on software. However, I care deeply about good sound and have made a considerable investment in my playback system through the decades. Granted, I am not likely to ever jump on the upgrade my gear bandwagon for the apparent next best thing and choose any system upgrades carefully.

 

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No it is not. Why do you spend more money on new software? Is it better? Sound better? Make it easier for you to manipulate your files and make them sound their best? No one spends more money to upgrade for no reason. Whether it is software or a new CD player that has a better chipset than your old one, it is no different to me. They both are a music delivery system. Without either one of them we would have no audio today.

I stand by my statement as it is not misleading by any means.

 

Sorry Jim, but I don't even understand what it is you are trying to say?

 

Buying a nicer pair of over the ear headphones, starting to buy CDs, and then finally getting a turntable and into vinyl sealed the deal.

 

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You are kidding, right? I generally write very clearly. Maybe you need to go back and read my original post? Or not.

 

It just hit me. Sorry about that, but I guess I needed that additional coffee to get the morning cobwebs out of my head.

By software I meant "music" (LP,CD), not PC software. I've been using MediaMonkey Gold for I guess close to 10 years now and have no desire to change.

 

I grew up listening to crappy record players. One time I went to a neighbor's house and hear their halfway decent stereo and was hooked. When I was 18 I bought my first HiFi stereo in 1974 at Schaack electronics at the Maplewood Mall in the Twin Cities area in MN. It was a Dual 1220Q turntable, Sherwood S-7900A STEREO RECEIVER and DLK3 (house brand) speakers. Through the 80s and 90s upgrading equipment became a hobby/obsession. I am happy with my stereo now, and no longer have the urge to hunt down better and better equipment.

Brands I have owned or do own include:
Eminent Technology
Grado
Electron Kinetics Eagle
Dynavector
Sumiko
Premier
SOTA
Grace
Crown
Perreaux
Moore-Franklin
Threshold
Spectral
ENTEC
Marantz
Nakamichi
Kenwood
Pioneer
NHT
DLK
ProAc
Rogers
Klipsch
Sony
Philips
Magnavox
Paradigm
Teac
Tascam
JBL
Rega

I am sure I am forgetting more than a few.

 

The hard part is deciding when one has reached a plateau rather than continue searching. It may be that the quest never really ends, but some long stopping points can happen. Around here the secondary systems (I have a few) are all pretty nicely settled and only the main still begs improvement, mostly in the turntable/arm/cart department. Soon maybe...

 

Love of music bit me at the age of 18 and always wanting a better system than I had at the time. First a radio/cassette boombox, then an amp and a pair of speakers, then a TT, then a cassette deck. Always loved every upgrade but knew there was better-sounding stuff out there so the ¨definitive¨ system took its current shape 8 years ago. It's in my profile and I know it's nothing to go crazy about but I love it and wouldn't replace any component unless I can no longer fix it.

 

I didn't know any audiophiles when I was in junior high, but after attending a few concerts, I wanted to have that same experience at home without having to go to a concert, so by the time I hit 20 and moved to my own place, I had saved a few grand to invest in a system. I am 53 now and still own almost all of that original system, some are only garage components now, but the Klipsch LaScalas will always remain in my living room as my front channel.
I do find it hard to believe that I could actually sell them for more then I paid for them 30+ years ago, little did I know I was making an investment?
But they aren't going anywhere soon, they are willed to my son.