How did YOU Become an Audiophile? My Audiophile Revolution.

My Intro:

In North Kansas City, there used to be a large corner drugstore called Katz. There was a cafe in the back, and at the bottom of the circular stairway in the basement were pets, hardware, and a shoe repair place which seemed to not be part of the main operation. Likewise, in a corner by the southeast door a couple of people set up a small area selling audio stuff. I was maybe 15 to 17. I'm thinking I could pin down the year, because this is what they were playing over this mid-to-late sixties Japanese gear [Pioneer? not sure]: the Fugs. They were singing that great song, "Nothing". I knew next to nothing about audio at the time, and the Fugs were a BIG shock, but that's where it all started.

Laz

MY AUDIOPHILE STORY (WARNING: VERY LONG):

My iBuds broke.
-> Head-Fi.

THE END

TL;DR

got a am transistor radio when i was 6 from a garage sale, it was yellow.
had a "ghetto blaster" and my own tape collection by 10. never looked back.

About 4 years ago.

When I started playing clarinet at 9. That was when I started seriously paying attention to music.

Gear-wise was building a pair of ribbon speakers in 2002. The design caught my eye and didn't look hard to build. Those knocked me flat and I got deeper in.

Head-Fi happened after getting the Audio Advisor catalog in December 2005 and buying the HD-650 to replace an aging MDR-V6. I liked them a whole lot, so one day, I Googled around to see if anyone else liked them. You all know the rest.

I don't actually consider myself an audiophile. I like good quality equipment, but I don't obsess over it.

My dad was. I can't help it.

GAD

Back when I was 16 (in the cretaceous period), my best friend took me over to a friend of his families one night. This guy had some really nice audio equipment for the time period. I was captivated by all the gear, but when he played a song I was very familiar with, and I heard a phone ring in the song that I'd never noticed before on my crappy little car system (Craig 8 track deck & cheap Craig speakers), I was hooked. He was a really cool guy, and noticed a kindred budding Audiophile. He helped me with some choices, and even gave me some gear in exchange for yard work. I've never lost interest, and it's been a growing process for over 30 years now.

I was always a geek, so I spent all my money on electronics. I made a lot of mix tapes in elementary school, then got my first cd and cd player in 7th grade and immediately bought aftermarket sony headphones. My first cds were space jam ST, Jagged Little Pill, and Sheryl Crow. When napster came out, I was interested and spent more money on a cd burner and big hard drive. Afterwards, I built pcs and got interested in audio equipment. Instead of a car, on my 16th birthday I asked for an expensive RCA 5-disc DVD/SVCD transport.

Searching out reviews for my echo indigo and Super.fi 5 pro brought me to head-fi. Now its just out of control.

i think walkman provided me a very early 'eargasm' in 86 listening to a borrowed casette one night with friends, it was a specially engineered recording for acoustic expansion and specifically for actual use whilst under the influence of LSD. it was electronic, very organic stuff (was the initial days when london was putting out a lot of club/drug based music and visual experiences). which i never heard the quality or likes of again, boy i have searched ever since for it.

this was only with a walkman and stock buds. so it was the music and the environmentals which hooked me, not the quality of the source and other technicalities, back when it was all so simple

i assume this is what started me off on 'the journey'

that soudscape that was present was amazing like the best funkiest, deepest DSP you could ever switch on, i was at one with the music. thats not happened since and dont think it ever will again.

I like hi-fi everything.

If it needs to be upgraded then I must research for the best (best in my budget). Even with small, pointless, cheap crap. I rarely buy anything with out reading up on it first.

But nothing has demanded my money quite like head-fi has. It went from upgrade to expensive hobby just like that.

Simple desire to make my music sound better.

I got heavily into music at a very young age (was listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2 and REM as early as 1987... must've been 9) and things just exploded by high school. I would constantly be seen with my craptastic little Sanyo portable tape player, (complete with 3 band EQ!) and had been spending quite a bit of time between the crusty old pads of my dad's 40lb headphones. They probably cost a lot at the time, but they really weren't too nice. None of that mattered, though. The seeds of headphone audiophilia were sown.

By grade 9, I had been given my first CD player (just a little boombox) and had already inherited my dad's component system - late '70s Pioneer receiver, a nice tape deck and a beautiful old turntable, the brands of which escape me right now, but I think the cassette deck was a TEAC.

I got my first real (cassette) Walkman for Christmas in Grade 9, a particularly outstanding Sony that basically became my defining "jewellery" through highschool. I got fed up with the packed-in earbuds pretty quick and, after I broke my first pair of "decent" cans (what are called Sony MDRV150 now), I scrounged and treated myself to the Sony MDR V500DJ. Not audiophile grade by any stretch of the imagination, but ignorance WAS bliss and I was happy with those tanks for about 7 years.

Thanks to headphones (and to some degree, discovering... "herbal stimulation"), I began to make a routine of lying back in the dark, doing nothing but letting the sounds take me away.

Around grade 12, my dad had noticed just how much of his music I had been diving into. He had recently converted to CDs and was busy rebuilding his collection in the format. I had two turntables, the one I inherited (for which I was having a hard time finding a needle/stylus replacement) and a garage-sale Sansui which was a steal at $5. At this point, he decided to give me all of his vinyl!

Now, here's the real cincher. I went to college for visual arts and, in my final year before I dropped out, I had elected (and excelled in) a program called Acoustic Installation I. It was a program dedicated to the design, implementation and execution of sonic sculpture and other acoustic experiments for the purposes of installation projects. I got my feet wet and my hands dirty running field recordings, some minimal studio work and most of all, production of the sounds themselves on PC.

It was there that I was formally introduced to MIDI and waveform editors and I ate it up. By the third week of the program I had a trial version of just about every major player in the digital studio market - Cubase, Sonar, Reason, ProTools, Sonic Foundry, etc. By the time the program had finished, I had a MIDI controller and full licenced copies of Reason, ReCycle and Ableton Live. Since most of my dabbling was done through my headphones, I had come to the conclusion that I owed it to myself to upgrade the trusty old cans.

I immediately fell in love with AKG's then-new (and horrifically back-ordered) K701 and, as a reference headphone, I figured it would satisfy my needs both as a hobbyist's studio monitor as well as my home-use listening cans. When the K701 wasn't cutting it on its own, I sought out amplification options, which led me here.

The rest is, of course, history. I'm in it deep now.

I just like electronic devices that output sound and have lots of buttons and lights on them....

Mmmmm....shiny lights.....