Before you were an Audiophile... - Page 3

I started to listen to music from my PC when I was about 8. Since then I always tried to increase the sound quality but because I didn't get no pocket money or a job (unemployment is a common issue within 8-13 years old:P) it was hard to do. I even tried to destroy my crap speakers so that parents would change it for something better. Obviously this could not happen too often so I had hard time living with $20-$30 small speakers. Then when I started earning some money I bought a first sound card and 'better' headphones. About 2 years ago I joined some PC audio forum and with a group of forum members we started testing out different audio gear and building up a 'database' of recommendations for different groups of people. Some of us stopped at ~$100 with their equipment and others didn't. Suddenly I spent $325 for an amplifier and have already planned how to spend another ~$800 during this year... It's quite a lot for a student like me.

I don't know why I am so interested in getting a better sound quality. It's not from my parents, they're both deaf, not my brother, he doesn't care how he listens to it.
I have never had expensive gear and cannot afford it yet. But one day, just not today.

For some strange reason I took music in high school when I rarely listened to it. But when in the classes listening to the sound that came from the speakers. Ever since I left I have searched for music like what I had come to love with little luck, just the odd song here and there, but no magic.

Now I have found this place I hope to find something close to a miracle, I hope to find some true music.
I hope to find some better gear that I can actually afford, not just what they sell at the shop.

When I download my music now I always search for the best quality preferring lossess (flac) over mp3. Playing from my cd player with such care to each and every note. Yet I still am not pleased and hope that one day I can listen to music as if I was in the room with the artist, listening to it live, feeling alive.

p

btw quick reply isn't working for me either.

I started with videogames, one night i decided to use headphones (to avoid disturbing others) from that night i wanted to have a better sound quality, i bought my first set of good headphones. (pair of vintage pioneers)

It started with my dad who was a tech at Bell Labs, back when there was a Bell Labs.  He loved jazz, especially bebop and built at least two amps that I remember. He also had an Aiwa reel to reel player he'd talked some uncle in the merchant marines into bringing back before you could buy them in the USA. So I grew up listening to pretty good quality music.

That all went to hell for awhile, listening to rock and roll through just about anything.  But I recovered enough to start buying decent speakers, tape player, and CD player.

Then came mp3s.  I got (have still) an iRiver iHP-140 and that started me on the random walk that got me over to head-fi.

I didn't really start caring about fidelity until recently when I went shopping around for new speakers, even though I've been musically trained most of my life. I got sucked into an audiophiles' forum locally, then started on the long journey in search of fidelity. And that's how I ended up here with ears perpetually itching for good sound-- and then better and best sound possible.

A missionary knew that I was interested in music, and when my family took them to dinner one day, we where talking and he mentioned a friend of his who was also into music and digital audio players. He brought up the Koss PortaPro, and said it was $30... I had just bought my first player, the RCA Lyra, and was looking for headphones that wouldn't break... They where my first open headphones, and that in and of itself was enough to get me hooked. My music was no longer in a resonating cave of echoes and distortion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuprCrispyBacon 

I don't know why I am so interested in getting a better sound quality. It's not from my parents, they're both deaf, not my brother, he doesn't care how he listens to it.
I have never had expensive gear and cannot afford it yet. But one day, just not today.

For some strange reason I took music in high school when I rarely listened to it. But when in the classes listening to the sound that came from the speakers. Ever since I left I have searched for music like what I had come to love with little luck, just the odd song here and there, but no magic.

Now I have found this place I hope to find something close to a miracle, I hope to find some true music.
I hope to find some better gear that I can actually afford, not just what they sell at the shop.

When I download my music now I always search for the best quality preferring lossess (flac) over mp3. Playing from my cd player with such care to each and every note. Yet I still am not pleased and hope that one day I can listen to music as if I was in the room with the artist, listening to it live, feeling alive.

p

 

btw quick reply isn't working for me either.

Welcome to Head-Fi...

Do not expect miracles, just take your time and enjoy the good moments. I have just finished listening to a King Crimson album which left me wondering: what do I want from the sensation of (the sound of) music? I still have not found all the answers. All I can do: listen, search, listen, search... It might just be that I never will be done yet I can accept that. That King Crimson album was strangely enjoyable... 
 

I remember listening to my ipod with some ear buds and thinking to myself,this sounds pretty good.I was wrong.

$50 cans? Jeez, that's a helluva lot more than any of the headphones/earbuds that I've ever used pre-falling to the dark side...

Back then, the thoughts of what audio could be never even crossed my mind. I was satisfied with being as loud as possible so I could annoy/show off to people (I listened to metal a lot in middle/high school, okay? >_> ) (Technically I still listen to a lot of metal, it's just been overtaken by all these Touhou remixes I have...).

Then last year I asked a friend of mine about getting a pair of headphones, since I remembered him mentioning that he was an audiophile when we first met. At his recommendation I bought a pair of AT-ES7 headphones (I needed something portable, as I was using it mostly for my iPod and for my laptop [first year of college, y'see?]).

And here I am now, more-or-less one year later (give or take a month or so), wearing a pair of DT990/600s and a couple days away from getting a pair of DT770/600s. (I'm still waffling on the 770s... dunno if I want the 600 or the 250 ohm version. I hear 600 is "best", but on the other hand, 250 would be more portable... which then brings up the question of "do I even want to expose my 770s to the outside world?" Grahhhh, frustration.)

-- Griffinhart

ETA: Though, to be clear, i wouldn't call myself an audiophile in seriousness. I still know next-to-nothing about audio. I just happen to know a little more about audio than most other people that I know. (Most of the time I talk a little bit about their sonic preferences and then either draw on my own personal experiences [which basically boils down to "closed cans are better at bass than open cans" and "high impedance requires more power!"] or send them to head-fi. <_< )

I've been thinking back on account of this thread, and I almost forgot that I had a brief basshead period. Oddly enough, I was listening to exclusively classical at that time (yes, when I was 12 I listened to only classical--go figure!), so basshead wouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind. I think it was the novelty. I had done pretty much all of my music listening on speakers with woofers a maximum of 5" in diameter, and deep bass was something I only heard in the movie theater or on those really awesome floorstanding speakers from my father's old 80s stereo which he gave away for free for some ungodly reason. Bass was something I didn't hear very often. And it was awesome! I remember getting one of those cheap 2.1 computer speaker sets with a subwoofer. Man was it cool for a while.

But it wasn't enough. It was boomy, muddy, and not particularly well extended, and even my 12 year old ears could tell that. This summer, when I was cleaning up the storage loft, I came across that set again. On a whim I opened it up and discovered that the driver was about three inches in diameter! It was some weird design that drove an 8" "pressure driver" on the front. I put it on the curb and was delighted to find that, the next day, somebody had taken it. They had left behind the satellites, which were required to use it at all.

I also remember my first pair of non-pack-in headphones. In fact, they were the Philips HP170. I paid $20.00 for them and chose them over a similar set from Altec-Lansing because the frequency response on the Philips was wider (remember those days? ). I don't recall much about them except that they were somewhat U-shaped in their curve and they didn't really isolate very well. Also, they were horrendously inefficient. They finally died on me when one of the wires kept coming undone on the inside and no amount of electrical tape could fix it anymore.

Then (I'll be flamed off this forum for this!), you'll never guess what I replaced them with. I'll give you a hint: they came from Best Buy and were the "best" thing on offer.

Yep, the dreaded Sony MDR-V700DJ. Believe it or not, I had not one pair of these, but two. After the first pair broke (the same way they all do), I received a second one for Christmas in 2004. I couldn't well say no, even though it was already dawning on me that they weren't really that great. When this second pair started breaking (two years ago...they held out until earlier this year) I realized it was time to put some serious thought into a replacement. I had been looking for several years already, and I was far beyond thinking they sounded good anymore.

As I believe I mentioned in my previous post here, I really only became a proper audiophile when I picked up a decent set of bookshelf speakers a few years ago. Now that I've got a set of cans I like, I'm set for a while. Well, I guess I do need a portable set, and a tube amp would be nice, and....

Ugh! This hobby is relentless!

I do not consider myself as an audiohile, but I started looking into headphones because I was thinking of getting BOSE. But I guest the rest is history

   It all started when I was building my gaming computer back in January. I wanted headphones so I could listen to my music louder than I had been on my dad's computer( I kept it quiet as to not disturb my parents) I was looking into "gaming" headphones with 5 speakers in each cup and all that and astounded at the bad reviews stating they broke easily, so I went to amazon, went to headphones, and decided to look at $300 headphones. I was surprised to see headphones with only 1 driver per cup and decided to research why they were so expensive, that is how I found out about what is called soundstage. I decided to get a stereo headset instead of a gaming one then.

   Unfortunatly I bought a skullcandy Hesh due to a great deal I found on them.. biggest mistake ever. It was a wall of sound with big sloppy bass at the front, and that is when I became acquanted with skullcandy's terrible support. I sent them back for a refund and they refused and sent another. No matter how many emails I sent complaining I would just get answered by a computer program which sent nothing but ads for more of their junk. 

   Still completly ignorant of this site, but realizing how bad skullcandy was I did some more research, through amazon reviews and found a list of good brands of headphones: Senn, Beyer, Grado, AKG, Denon, Ultrasone At that point I refused all closed headphones thinking they would have absolutely no soundstage like the Hesh. I also did not look at Ultrasone's thinking the S-Logic sounded like a cheap gimmick. After a month of trying to choose a headphone I picked the SR-80i after seeing a review stating they brought thunder, rain, and gunshots to life in their favorite games. I was very impressed by the Grados, but still had not heard of head-fi. It was not until a month or two later that I followed a link on OCN and ended up here.

My story is a little more simple. Growing up, I found out that I had extremely good hearing, which ended up being more of a curse. I found myself hearing everything from the high-pitched buzz of electricity going through a room all the way down to the low roll of thunder storm many miles away, and well before anyone else heard it coming. The smallest noises were the ones I tended to notice most. This led me to appreciate high quality sound. As my best friend and I set out to start building quality gaming computers I made sure to get some nice speakers. Unfortunetly I was on the slimming budget of a teenager without a regular job and went for a $75 set of logitec 2.1 speakers. They were impressive at the time but I quickly found out how inadiquate they were when I started helping out at a recording studio in town. I quickly moved up to a set of Insignias for my laptop and then went a little further and bought a pair of HD 280 pro cans. Once again, not what most would consider audiophilia, but it's progress in the right direction. As I'm now in the progress of building my own in bedroom recording setup I am looking at all aspects of sound. This led me to revamp my iPod so that almost all the songs are now 256 kbps MP3's. Little steps are all a guy on my budget can do, and I'm not exactly out to drop a few grand on a hi-fi system, but I've found that as long as I can keep raising the bar a little here and a little there I will be perfectly happy with my audio experience.

For a long time.. I had no idea. I was happy with music in general. However, I was never the type to accept what was culturally popular.. I wanted something deeper, something more complex. Thus I grew up as an avid classical music fan which later developed into metal. The day I was introduced to higher quality equipment was the day I never looked back.