My family doesnt think I am mad....they are just worried that I am too unconventional.

In my culture (Hindu, Indian) a make follows this path in life :-

* Birth
* School
* Tuitions
* Tries to get into IIT
* If that doesnt happen joins an engineering college
* If that doesnt happen - joins a medical college
* studies
* completes college and gets a degree
* writes GRE and TOEFL sometime during college
* Gets admission to univs around the world
* Goes and studies some more
* gets another degree and a job
* begins earning around $60,000 per year
* Comes home to find a girl waiting to get married
* Brings the hapless thing to the US
* rolls around in the sack for a day or two and knocks her up
* goes back home after a year with a baby
* buys land and builds a house
* already has a house abroad (not in India)
* keep making trips between home and not-home
* tries to bring every other loser in the family to the same country
* gets frustrated one day and goes back to India for good
* studies
* does nothing until the fat lady sings


I plan to change all that.

I am going to be unconventional and kick some ass. I have a vision!!!

I may not get married but maybe thats a good thing...

I may get funky looks when I go back to India for being "abnormal" but I dont care...

I may end up on some tibetian mountain with a loin cloth and a bottle of mineral water...meditating...

with Shure E5's and my Rio Karma and an SR-71 of course


Aaah!!

Its great to be unconventional!!!

Today a friend at work mentioned he recently bought an all-in-one LP player, CD player and cassette player. I mentioned that audiophiles believe analog sound is superior to digital sources. All coworkers in the immediate area looked at me like I was a crazy madman.

I get weird looks from my roommates sometimes...especially the one time jerry1130 and mustang were over at my place with their setups. I think they were shocked that there were other students at our school with really weird-looking headphones plugged into funky-looking boxes with tubes sticking out and that we might actually want to get together to try out different setups!

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I think your name's quite fitting, Guru

Meh. My roomate thinks I'm absolutely nuts and doesn't understand the concept either. He's much more pissed off because of all the expensive stuff I have in our apartment I make no effort of making it neat/tidy for him either

My father can appreciate good sound, but he can't see spending 150 dollars on cables like I just did. He said I should have bought a book. Good thing, because I did - and it left me with just enough money to put the gold-plated RCA jacks on my new amp

If it were speakers, it'd be another thing. However, unfortunately, the acoustics in my apartment sucks and therefore I listen to headphones. Most people I know didn't think that 300 dollar headphones existed.

They also find it quite odd that I spent more money on interconnects than my food/booze money last month

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So I take it you liked the E5's?

I'm the same way GS, I don't see myself getting married (at least at this point in my life). I'd rather get a job and live a normal single life. And of course I'll have one hell of a system to flaunt in my sig

I get some funny looks on campus with my E5's in, but I don't really care. I take a certain pride in knowing that probably 99% of the kids laughing and staring will never hear music through a system similar to what I'm carry in my pocket. Anybody else have strange hostile thoughts when getting stares and looks from others?

'where are the flashing lights/supermeggaturbofingloud button'

I had a console stereo when I grew up. My mom got it from the bank for opening an account. It was called studio 78 or something like that. It had an 8 track, automatic record changer and tuner. It also had giant speakers in the front and a COLOR ORGAN. Damn I had so much fun with that thing!

Most people think I'm nuts.
However....
I had a coworker over a couple weeks ago to hear the system. He proclaimed it the best system he had ever heard.

He then tried the HD-650's with the new Nora Jones CD.
I thought I was gong to need a crowbar to pry those phones off his head He fell madly in love, said he could "feel" her singing.

He was converted, and he talked about it for 2 days straight at work, but no one else was convinced. All they could do was wonder how could anyone spend so much on headphones.

Guess I need to invite more of them over.

My parents think I'm overly critical when it comes to anything music/sound related, but I think in the end they see it as a good thing...as I'm a somewhat talented violinist (I should be critical). My brother on the other hand thinks I'm completely crazy/stupid. When he found out how much my latest violin cost he replied "Are you kidding me?" Of course he knew when I was going to buy an iPod I'd have to replace the earbuds...he just didn't expect me to do it with ones that cost more than the player. If these E5s don't work out...he's really gonna think I'm crazy.

my audio addiction has definitly earned me a rep amongst friends. I've got about 4 full Stereo systems (mostly 60's-70's stuff), several pairs of headphones, I'm also a musician and my PA is massive (and I put vintage mullard tubes in my preamp that I take to all shows), and like the rest of you i'm sure, I'm never done. Need to buy more cable and ends.... damn that old tubed Bogen amp is a good deal.... I wonder if I can build an amp out of this.... yeah, it's loud, but is it loud enough?.... I know I've got a bunch of empy cabs and blown speakers, but look how COOL these are!, and they'll make great furniture until I fill them/fix them.

My husband, who got me into this mess, thinks I'm insane. Anytime I let him listen to my stuff, all he says are "They're headphones."

Some friends at school thought I was mad when I started talking about the difference between old and pcdp's, and how source matters.

But what I love is the occassionally curious/envious looks on the bus. I was sitting across from a 15 year old boy who obviously figured out that that was an amp hooked to an ipod in my bag, and that those were custom IEM's in my ears. He looked confused for a millasecond, but for the rest of the time looked like he wanted to try it.

Some of my staff think I'm completely insane to be spending so much on this hobby. Every time they tell me this, however, I just point to their purse or handbag that costs more than my Alessandro.

The last time we were checking in for a flight a friend asked me about the price of the Sensas, he already had a feeling, and when I told him and his girlfriend, a family behind us in queue almost fainted.

I don't get much support either. My parents don't think it is necessary to spend alot of money on audio equipment and until now I didn't. Wait till I buy a dac, speakers... they'll go crazy
I can't stand people around me who believe their creative speaker set is the best etc. etc. I always try to convince them to buy some decent speakers but they don't want to spend more than like 50$
They don't know what they're missing.

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Yeah that's happened to me before too. A couple girls almost dropped their books when they somehow overheard me telling my friend how much the E5's cost. That's something I don't run around telling people, but hey, if you are really that interested then I'll tell you.

Heh, you should have given that family behind you the URL to Head-Fi

The strange looks I get don't come from the equipment. Most of it is relatively inconspicuous, and I don't talk about the money. People just assume it's a nice rig and move on. My usual response to questions is simply to give an audition, and that explains everything.

What gets a What response is the music collection. A wall of CD storage makes a fairly conspicuous decorating statement.

BW