My father got me interested initially. He replaced the stock speakers in our Honda Accord (the same car i still drive today, 14 years after he bought it, approaching 300k miles, lol) with some Kenwood components and a small two channel amp that his father bought him. it sounded awesome and was a big step in the right direction.
once we got his own car and i started driving the honda in high school, i upgraded the system again with two sets of infinity kappa perfects and an awesome matching 12" sub in the trunk. this was all run from a little alpine d-class amp and a jl audio slash series 4-channel, which i still think are great for their regulated power supplies. i knew little about the importance of a quality source and unfortunately paired that stuff with a crappy sony xplod headunit. it sounded great though, and the clarity (read now, sibilance, lol) of the tweeters was scary at first. i thought i broke something anytime a metallic sound would play! that was my first revelatory moment in music. i used to drive kids to practice (crew team) in high school and everyone would ride in my car because it had an awesome system. this definitely helped to push me deeper into the hobby, as it improved my social life, lol.
i started working at a car audio shop and got tons of boston acoustics stuff on accomodation. i eventually sold it all and then got the even better stuff from boston and installed it. this was probably two years ago and the quality of the system was unbelievable. i was running a top-of-the-line clarion drz9255 headunit with external power supply and two arc audio amps. the speakers were called the spzs and the sub was called the spg555, which stood for "special products group...this sub moves 555 cu ft of air per minute at max output" crazy loud but also tight. this, combined with a fully dynamat job and acoustical foam made me spend tons of time in my car, which ultimately lead to another hobby of driving around and exploring the world (which is still an awesome hobby)
i started to get out of car audio because all that awesome stuff put me in a hole and ultimately cars are just not the best acoustical space, no matter how hard you try to improve them. i had some old technics dj cans that a friend had and after hearing his i got my own. we were also listening to vinyl on some technics tables and it sounded spectacular. i never heard electronic music sound so smooth!
my father pushed me harder into it again when he upgraded his home system to some nice b&w speakers and sealed, powered sub run by some NAD source equipment. sounded powerful and clean as hell, still the best home system i have heard to date.
i got more into headphones as i was looking for something to pass the time and came across headphone.com. their wealth of information and awesome presentation captured my interest and i learned tons about the importance of dacs and amplification, etc. that ultimately lead to head-fi and now my current system (only audio equipment in my life) which is a rolled iBasso D10 with op-amps from HiFlight and a set of Audio Technica ATH-M50s. I listen to wav files as much as possible and have never heard music so clear as what is in my head today.
i plan on upgrading to a set of JH-13 Pro custom IEMs ASAP. Maybe down the road I will get another tube amp or something, but at this point I have just read so damn much about all this that i cannot go back...the rabbit hole goes very deep with this hobby, but headphones are durable, portable and remarkably awesome sounding for the money...even at 1200 for a set of custom IEMs, that is nothing compared to a dope home rig.
oh and another guy that influenced me is a family friend who designs speaker cabinets. he has some super sensitive custom made speakers run off of a set of dual mono tube amps that he built himself. amazing, but too quiet for me, and not enough bass, lol.
