Do You Remember Your First Time?Is It As Good As You Dreamed?

@freediver excellent story and background on your journey.  Sorry about the ups and downs with your father.

More than anything, a most profound THANK YOU for your service to the nation!

I was kinda hoping for audience participation,after all I did ask 2 questions in my title..

Audio did not happen to me; I sought it out starting at various dealers in the late nineties. The really nice gentlemen at Audio Insight, a Dallas area dealer long since closed, entertained a kid in his late teens with an audition of Hales Revelation 3s with Classe amps and a Wadia CDP in a really nice and large listening room. And it was awesome. My hands were gripping the chairs armrest during the audition, and I was eager to buy them along with used amp they had on consignment. The realization was better than the dream, for sure. I still have the speakers (in the closet) and the amp doing computer audio duty.

Hi-fi happened for me, in reprospect, and I did not even understand until years later that it was hi-fi. It was afternoon in autumn I think.It was 1970 something.I was in a school classroom and the Principals voice asserted itself over the intercom,"Assembly in the auditorium at 1:30".Visualizing a boring speech on one thing or another,the teacher in our room  chimed in reassuringly,"its something you guys are gonna like".He went no farther and everybody wondered "what the heck".
My last class just happened to be not that far down from the auditorium on the first floor. I went into the 2,000+ seat auditorium and took an early seat as it quickly filled up.On the stage I noticed a huge white stand up screen.The projector screens they used in the classrooms were not 1/10th as big.There were stacked pairs of something with wires connected to thier backs.The only speaker I knew back then was a Pa. speaker.These looked different.They were shaped different.The usual bored sighs and moans at an assembly were stifled with confusion and anticipation.The music started, with a drum hit I think,it seemed to come out of nowhere.I remember craning my head to see if there were musicians standing behind the giant white screen which extended to the floor,ready to jump out.It sounded live.

 The images on the screen suddenly flashed on in sync with the music.Joe Cocker playing air guitar as he emotionally sang about help from his friends.Alvin Lee looking like he was trying to set a land speed record on his guitar notes, Sly and the Family Stone,The Who,Santana.The crowd in front of the Pavilion on screen looked countless.It could have been 100,000 people,or was it a million?No one was counting and they were all sitting on the ground, no seats., but between musical numbers its roar was amazing.Some of the other kids dIdn't understand either.Someone who was particularly idiotic and disturbed called out requestingly "Van Halen".Hoping that the 2 men on stage standing around were like  DJ's who could switch you to anywhere to see anyone playing live.The picture and sound was so big loud and real.It looked like a live feed.Sound in theaters was not even 1/3 that loud.There was a  feeling of LIVE about it.It looked like a live feed to us.The stack of rectangular boxes on the stage read BOSE.I Don't get into if Bose is real good or not.It was good enough and loud enough that afternoon .It was clear big and loud.Thats all I remember.Reflecting back , it could have likely been some kind of promotion for BOSE speakers.We all just thought it was to give us a good time, which it was.The one day we were all sort of sad that the school day was over.

^^^ A living history lesson using Woodstock,how awesome!

I remember a visit as a boy with my dad to his friend’s house where he played a system with four large, black speakers -one in each corner pointing into the center. I was blown away by music coming from everywhere. I believe the owner was a doctor by trade as my father pointed out that is how he could afford the hi-fi. His son had an old Garrard with a rotatable stylus for 33/78. And a real yellowing, human skeleton under his bed, in a box, all the separated bones. Procured by his dad apparently. We never had a record player in our house, but loved visiting luckier cousins who had a Stereogram cabinet where we would stack up the autochanger with 45s and dig through the new 33 compilations which came out every month. I was fasciated by the mechanics and the way its tubes took time to heat up.