It was a roundabout way for me. I've been a serious music lover since I was nine: I started playing clarinet and began to appreciate classical.
I took electronics classes in high school and occasionally built or fixed things. One day, about 11 or 12 years ago, I came across an old Philco Transitone radio in a junk shop. It was cheap, really great looking and I thought I could fix it. So I bought it and managed to fix it. Still have it and it still works. That led to a collection of old tube radios... I've probably been through about 100 of them by now. That gradually turned into an interest for multiband radios. Ones that pick up shortwave and other frequencies. Listening to those convinced me to get an amateur radio license.
While poking around tube literature at the library one day, I turned up a copy of AudioXpress magazine with plans for ribbon loudspeakers. Really, really interesting. So I built a pair and just fell in love with them. Looking around more, I realized that I could also build amps and other hi-fi gear, so I got into that.
As for headphones, I had a pair of much loved Sony MDR-V6s for years. About three years ago, I got an audiophile catalog and the Sennheiser HD-650 caught my eye. A nice pair of headphones would be a nice use of some Holiday Bonus money. So I ordered a pair and a Creek OBH-11 to power them.
I was stunned. So I got online to see if anyone else was enjoying high-end headphones.
Vinyl kicked in about two years ago. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into it, so I grabbed a used Rega Planar 3 for sale locally. Loved it. That led to a Gyrodec that I upgraded to a full Orbe (AC) and dropped a SME IV on it.
As for projects, I'm real close to finishing an Eric Barbour Brute Force headphone amp - with the regulator tubes. Then Ciuffoli's SESS with the 417A, and then some work on the speaker rig. I've got the iron and parts to build the Electra-Print Ultrapath preamp and Rozenblit's OTL. After that, I'll probably finally get around to the Beta22 and Dynamight. Oh, and just got the Sowter output transformers for a 45 based headphone amp. Probably about a year from now.
Got into the science of it from my car audio setup. Hated stepping out of my amazing sounding car and into my cheap sony in-ears. Friend recommended Grado SR80s. Found head-fi looking for portable amp reviews.
I saw a photo of a pair of Grado HP-1000 long time ago when I was a starving art student. I never forgot how beautiful they are aesthetically and I could only imagine how equally beautiful they must sound. I thought about them occassionally and checked prices over the years. This year those headphones crossed my mind again and I saw the prices have really gone up. I decided now that I'm "grown up" and making some "real money", it's now or never since they are so scarce so I landed a pair.
To read up on the cans, I found HeadFi on Google and learned I need a good amp...then came the CD player...then I found out about this crazy thing about cables improving the sound...yesterday I even ordered the Sylvania "holy grail" 5751 bp tm for a tube amp I haven't even ordered. It's been a $$$$ month and I'm only only started, and things are only getting crazier. Is there a vaccine for this upgraditis I read about here? I sure don't want to get it.
Always been an audiophile, being a musician from a very early age helps train the ear to appreciate proper sound. My first real cans were Senn HD580s I bought myself probably around age 16. Later on people on my overclocking forum started posting about the Chaintech AV710 soundcard being a great value. I picked one up for about $20 and was very satisfied. There were some driver problems which led me to searching about the sound card which of course.. ended up here!
When I was younger, my older brother bought me a Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1 Digital to upgrade from my onboard and I immediately noticed a huge improvement in sound quality. Later, I upgraded my really crappy speakers to some alright Creative ones and again appreciated the difference for my money. When I was 15, I was stoked to be getting a newly-released Zune 80 for Christmas and looked into getting some decent IEMs over the ones bundled. I went on the ZuneScene forums (where the majority recommended Skullcandy...) during my research and heard about Head-Fi on there (at the time, it was down) and then ended up getting a pair of Denon AH-C700K for $100 when my original budget was around $40
. That later turned into further speaker upgrades, buying a pair of ATH-A900, etc.
Been a record collector from the mid 1970s and it was always about the music. All my record collector friends had crappy HI/FI which is a kind of strange phenomenon if you think about it. Spending all this money to amass huge record collections, but never really hearing the music that clear. They were record collectors first then audiophiles second. I had some ok stuff but as the years went on just slowly purchased better and better stuff.
One amazing thing is it is all relevant to what you are used to. You could have a 1990 tape Walkman then get a 1985 Fisher amp at the thrift store for $19.99 and still be an audiophile.
It just depends how much you like your gear and music,and what sounds good to you. This is never about money even though people think it is. My favorite systems have been homemade by electronic geeks with a soldering iron hooked up to ugly homemade speakers that sounded great. They were audiophiles who spent very little money but had a handle on what it took to make great sound.
It all started when I walked into a high end audio shop on a slow day as a young teenager and a cocky salesman laughed at me when I said one word, "Bose."
He then took me into a room, had me sit down, and played some classical music from a TT. It was a McIntosh setup and remember thinking it was old fashioned looking (now I'd call it timeless). He dropped the needle and it was like listening to music for the first time in my entire life. It amazed me and I didn't even care about classical!
This sparked my interest in high end speakers and turntables. Now it took a few years for me to buy a decent turntable, but when I realized that the cost nice speakers were going to be a stumbling block, I sold everything off and bought an ipod.
Fast forward to hanging out with one of my friends and listening to his set of NHT M-00. I thought they were great and inexpensive. I couldn't believe the sound that was coming out of those small active speakers. Granted they're not like in the upper echelon of high end audio, but they're affordable and showed you could have a good audio setup using your computer as a source. But after purchasing them, I noticed they didn't sound as good as they did at my friend's place.
I called him and he said I should come here to find a DAC in the forums. I had started an account here 4 years ago and I was surprised to see it wasn't purged. So I logged in and started posting again. The rest as they say is history.
BTW, most of my friends (including my gf) think I'm slightly obsessed.
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