What made you become an 'audiophile'.

Cool. That makes sense. The JBLs I use have a horn midrange and horn tweeter. The midrange and tweeter are compression drivers. The horns are inert being made out of material called Sonoglass. They do in fact sound good off axis.

http://www.jblsynthesis.com/Products/Details/149

 

I grew up around audio, video, film, and electronics. I liked working on electronics and mechanical stuff but my dad, who repaired cameras never would let me tear into those, I think he wanted to keep me from becoming a camera repairman and starving to death like he would have without a few connections he had which he did not want me exposed to. He'd seen the below the line Hollywood life and wanted no dealings with it. To me the tech is as much art as the music, or whatever else you listen to, is. A first rate analog electronic engineer is as much a creative thinker as a great composer or lyricist, a toolmaker or a good engineering tech as much an artist as most of the pop musicians out there. (Digital engineers-not to bash digital, we wouldn't have this forum or the other benefits of digital tech if not for them-are like pure math heads. It's no coincidence that they like to count from zero like occultists!)

 

For me it was a natural progression from a forever growing collection of music.

 

I guess I am an audiophile.I just try not to get carried away.

 

Probably the biggest hardware store in my hometown some 40 years ago: they had a nice HiFi-department (especially when compared to all those plastic far-east products other stores/shops were selling): AR, Connoisseur, Dual, Harman-Kardon, JBL etc. - the only seller around that provided U.S. gear, actually. That was one wonderland to us, the guys who at the time wanted, ehh... more bass! more clarity!! more volume!!! But little by little we learned. A good, committed salesman helped. There really were clear differences of sonic quality between the different gear.

Last summer, an old schoolmate was sorry that he hadn't bought an AR turntable, but instead spent 20 years of swapping between Pioneer, Sony, Technics, Pioneer, Sony... Pretty much my sentiment, too, though I had both Connoisseur and Dual in seventies.

 

The Pioneer turntables are good sounding IMO, and Technics too. Lately the Pioneer PL-530 and PL550's have been fetching as much as $800.00 on ebay. Compare that to the original AR which is no higher than $300.00. My first turntable was an AR. The AR has superior sonics in the bass region, super tight bass. They're super quiet, no audible rumble... and the speed is always dead on. I still like 'em!

 

I was strong-armed at an AES convention. Shoulda sued the bastids.

 

My granddad was an inventor, teacher and musician. I was fascinated by his tape recorders and a 78 record cutting machine, circa 1960. My folks were smart enough to encourage this and get me a small, battery-operated 3" reel mono recorder about 1962. After that, I received a larger Mayfair unit which could play, but not record, in stereo. It had a speaker/amp removable lid. I had ONE stereo tape that I saved up to buy, Ferde Grofe's 'Grand Canyon Suite'. We didn't have a stereo in the house at that time, just a mono flipover 33/78, so hearing stereo for the first time, I was absolutely hooked.

After that, I got a Panasonic r-r for Christmas, probably '68, and then I mowed lawns all summer to get a cheap Olsen Electronics receiver and a Garrard TT with a Shure '44. I used a pair of 8" one-way speakers until I came into a secondhand pair of 2-way EV's that were actually pretty nice. I began to read Stereo Review and High Fidelity, had subscriptions for years and years until they pretty much folded.

In the mid-70's I saved up for some better gear, including a Teac 3340S and outboard Dolby B units. I recorded several bands and managed a couple. I built Dynaco kits and soon had a quad system with a Dyna 400, 120, 2-PAT-4s (lol), Empire 598II/1000 ZEX, an FM-5, EV matrix decoder and a JVC CD-4 (terrible). Kept that for years while marriage, kids and jobs intervened on most listening opportunities. Went for CDs in 1985 and bought fewer and fewer LPs until about 1989 when I stopped buying vinyl for a long time.

My two sons got me back into listening again and vinyl. They found Technics and JVC TTs and started borrowing LZ, Beatles, The Band, Zappa, all of it. They were always very careful with my stuff, amazingly, so I didn't mind. I began to listen again and started to look for vintage gear to improve the sound I had always loved before. Both sons are in NYC now with bands (and day jobs!)--they really were influenced by my hobby and love all kinds of music, as do I.

 

I wouldn't call myself an audiophile. But my recent set of sound quality concerns began when I my mother told me that she was going to toss the remainder of my dad's classical and jazz LPs if I didn't pick them up. So I did. And then I dug my old record player out of the basement and very quickly realized that a.) I enjoyed the act of listening to music and b.) the LPs (and the 320 kbps Mp3s that came with new ones) sounded better than the MP3's I'd been listening to for years. Somehow, I'd pushed music into the background and stopped listening or caring about it. I was buying and being given new albums by artists I liked, but I mostly listened to them in the car or while working in front of my computer. Suddenly I noticed that those 128 kbps MP3 files that had been so convenient sounded like zinc pennies. That's when I began importing new CDs lossless.

The turntable had issues, so it got replaced quickly. The speakers were blown out, so they got replaced. Nothing fancy, like I said I'm not an audiophile. Now I'm slowly going through all of my CDs and re-importing them, as well as replacing old iTunes 128 kbps files using iTunes Match. The idea is to have a very simple system in the living room that a turntable and Apple AirPlay as sources.

So the short answer is that the MP3 & computers devalued both sound and also the experience of listening to music. I became a person concerned about sound quality when I finally noticed.

 

Maybe I'm in the denial phase. I'll check back in five years.

 

Quite frankly because I don't have the time or money to.

 

I have to agree with those who say being an audiophile is a state of mind rather than the state of your system.

 

I wanted my music to sound better, and my records to last longer.

 

Well! I for one am not an audiophile. There that proves it!

 

Sometimes it's just a tough spot to accept the facts... and it's so easy to confuse the concepts of the hifist and the audiophile (I've done that). And who wants to be the guy of a joke who's wawing his lil' finger while listening to his Chesky or Telarc records?

 

Believe it or not, when I heard a pair of bose 901's in the early 1970's. Sounded amazing compared to my speakers w plastic cabinets. I never realized that anything like that even existed.

 

to heck with the stereo gear stuff
you had a 69 GTO?? do you still have it?

 

The '69 was in Carousel red, known as Huggar Orange. I was the second owner back in 1974, paid only 2K for it. The car was special ordered by the original owner with special heads and a bench front seat. The interior was two tone black and white, 100% all original with 49,000 miles. I had cut the back deck for the speakers.. the 8 track mounted in the glove box, the Craig amp located under the back deck. The car had 350 hp base YS engine, but as I said, it was special ordered with special heads which I think were experimental Ram air IV heads, since neither the base nor the Ram Air intake gaskets fit it (I had the idea to block the heat riser for a cooler incoming charge, and had to punch my own intake gaskets) This GTO was very fast, it was a freak. (friends at the body shop where I worked said it was a high 12's car, but I never raced it)

The thing about the restored GTO's are wonderful, however their road handling and feel are not the same as a stock GTO. For example, the replacement shocks are not the same rate as OEM, nor the replacement springs. (no company produces an OEM spec shock nor spring.. stock springs were higher rate.. the replacements are softer like a stock LeMans ) The performance exhausts are not the same note as original and there is no replacement resonator available for the '69... no other model year GTO had these. (no company produces OEM spec mufflers for the GTO, unbelieveable) The stock '69 had a 4 muffler system similar to a Caddy, a short reverse flow on the left bank, a longer reverse flow on the right, and two small factory glass pack resonators at the tail pipe. The tail pipe had a small crescent cut at the tip to reduce turbulence at the tip (the typical straight cut introduces back pressure, they thought of everything.. I remember reading about this trick in the hot rod magazines) There is nothing like the OEM feel and performance of a stock GTO. The restos can perform equal to or better, but not the same feel. The '69 GTO was sold in 1976 to a kid in Pawling NY who totaled it within a month of owning it... sadly.

I have only two pics that need to be scanned and posted on photobucket. I'll post them here later.

 

I guess if I'm an audiophile, as per OP and Steve H, it's in large part because I learned I could be one without spending that much money, contrary to my original perceptions about the whole thing. A relatively low priced USB DAC, vinyl rig, a slightly used amp, purchasing speakers directly from the manufacturer, tons of online reviews and of course you guys and bam, audiophile.

 

G

great story on the "goat"
Thanks for sharing

 

I've always been one; just never realized it until I came across the term "audiophile".

 

My first pair of IEM's were such a revelation that I have been obsessed with good sound ever since. Went through a huge headphone phase for a long time then started investing money into a good quality analog front-end and speaker setup. My dream is to have a high end system and the room to do it justice.

 

Here is the 1969 GTO, with a Kraco 8 track player concealed in the glove box and a Craig amp, the first production car stereo power amp (both not pictured) I was still at home on the farm, pictured are two family members and my boss. Notice the bias ply tires? They were soon replaced with G70-14 Polyglass Wide Oval Good Year tires, does anyone remember them?
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Your dad's feelings remind me of a good friend in high school who was into building models. His father had been at it for decades and won many competitions for his work, but my friend was even more obsessed and at some point surpassed him, beating him in a competition. The father never built another model. Very sad. My friend (on the other hand) kept developing and ended up building for the film industry. You've seen his work in many movies.

My own audio interests started with my father's fascinating home built mono Williamson amp that resided in the basement (the power supply was of his own design, weighed 85 lbs. and had an isolation cage around it to keep the cat and kids from frying themselves). I loved the thing, became mildly addicted and so it continues. Rebuilding his amp is on my list one of these days, but he told me to come up with something else as a power supply,,,,