What started you on the path to being audionut?


I was 14 and visited by 26 year old neighbor. Went to his room. He fired up his Thorens table with some Chicago running through a Carver preamp/cube amp into Heresy horn speakers.
At the time this was leaps and bounds better versus anything else I heard. I was hooked from that moment.

He also played trumpet in a Chicago tribute band. I use to sit outside on my mom's front steps listening to his band practice as the music flowed out from the open, cellar hatchway doors.
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My parents went shopping for a console in the 1960s. (They settled on a Magnavox.) While shopping, they asked the salesman about some components on a shelf in the corner of the store, and they were told they were very expensive but sounded good. This piqued my curiosity.

In high school, I had to walk past an audio store. I went in and eventually bought a cheap Fisher 3 piece combo system (turntable mounted on top of the receiver) which I thought was much better than our Magnavox.

In college, a lot of guys had much better stuff in their rooms, and I learned a lot more about good sound. By the time I graduated, I had collected a decent system and the bug was in my blood.

My pride and joy were my Rectilinear 3 highboys. But years later when I read a column by Julian Hirsch about how modern speakers had surpassed them, I started upgrading again. Like I replaced the Rectilinear 3s with Thiel 3.6s and then with Wilson W/P 6s. etc etc.
Back around 73-76 I was a teenager ,and had met older guys coming back from the service with some very nice systems . I was hooked on getting a better system ever since.
It was 1977-78 I was 13 years old and I walked into my Sister's much older boyfriend's condo, and there was a whole McIntosh system complete with all the goodies, tuner included. McIntosh XR7 speakers and top of the line Sony TT with a Tandberg cassette recorder. The lights on all the components at night were incredible.Everything was sitting on a really wide and low chrome and glass rack. Prior to that day I thought Pioneer was High-Fi.(lol) Today I own a McIntosh MC352 stereo amplifier. (go Figure)