What started you on the path to being audionut?Listening to music and wanting it to sound better.
As a youngster, I simply lusted after my own record player, but my Dad insisted that the console stereo that he was buying was sufficient. Yeah, it sounded better than AM radio, but it wasn't in my room, but in the family room where everyone watched TV. When could I listen to "my" music?
Somehow I talked the old man into buying me a 3" reel-to-reel portable recorder popular at the time. And I recorded music off the radio and even hard-wired it to the TV's speaker wire to record The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. But good sonics, nah, just convenient -- the ability to kinda' play what I wanted, when I wanted.
For better sonics, having no clue what I was doing, I bought raw speakers, bolted them into cardboard boxes with holes punched in their tops which I spray painted to look more finished. My AM radio sound better, but...!!
I really didn't hear a decent component system until I was in college; when I heard my music appreciation prof's system in his office. It sounded like what I pictured in my mind and my reading in the hi-fi rags at the time. Man, at that time, did I lust after just my own record player, let alone a Marantz receiver (simply because of how it looked)!
While in college, I even “courted” a friend to be my roommate in the apartment I was renting, because he had just returned home from the Navy and had bought a Pioneer Quadraphonic component system in Japan.
Thereafter, while dating my soon-to-be wife, I did manage to help her spend her money on a Zenith "Circle of Sound" record player (like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=zenith+circle+of+sound+record+player&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pbmgU7bZNdOqyASzloHYDA&ved=0CBwQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=1067#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=idpZCl6fEfWeuM%253A%3Bz5LDDCV0Xnl2kM%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fs3.amazonaws.com%252Fassets.svpply.com%252Flarge%252F1417297.jpg%253F1402563512%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fsvpply.com%252Fitem%252F1417297%252FVtg_1965_Zenith_Circle_of_Sound%3B500%3B375-- hardly hi-fi, but ALL either of us could afford.
After college and my first "real" job and with money for other than necessities, I bought my first fairly high-end system and the rest is hist......
But it all started with just wanting to listen to music -- the music I liked. And when I eventually realized that I could not only listen to music, but actually recreate the performance in my own environment....what a revelation!!!! One that every time I fire-up the big rig, remains with me today....