[vkaul]

Friend of mine suggesting my son and I build a set of speakers during the Covid lockdown.

[DrJ-10]

All right, I'll play.

I grew up around good stereo equipment -- Bozaks, Citations and McIntosh, Revox reel-to-reel and so forth -- and got my first stereo in Jr. High.  A few years later I heard DQ-10s, which I thought amazing (and bought), and then mated it with a reworked pair of Dyna Mk IIIs (8417 tubes) and a Precision Fidelity Preamp.  SOTA table, Premier arm, and various Denon cartridges.

The awakening happened when I heard the Beveridge Model 2-SWs and the Hill Plasmatroic loudspeakers.  I preferred the Bevs -- they simply were stunning.  I also heard properly set-up QUAD 57s in a great room.  Both showed me for the first time what stereo can do.

In the end I still remain more of a musician than a gear head.  I don't need or want super high-end stuff -- I just want to enjoy the music.  Still, I do have two pair of Bevs now.

[ermd1]

My initial passion struck in 2003; I started with M&K's since was good reputed brand.  Was quite happy with these for 17 years.
Then I started reading everything I could about speakers, receivers, etc. 
After listening to about 10 different brands including B&W, martin Logan, etc., Decided upon Salk.
Eagerly awaiting them to be manufactured !

[ULTRABright]

I have always been a lover of music. I worked in music venues all throughout undergrad and grad school and have spent countless hours listening on cheap, poorly set up gear and loving every minute of it. However, after Recently purchasing my first home I felt so compelled to finally build my first real system in a space that was truly my own, and I have really enjoyed the learning process. Hearing my favorite music on a proper reference setup makes it feel like I’m hearing all of my favorite albums for the first time again. This experience has been much more powerful to me than I expected.

[Budget_Mike]

I have always been a lover of music. I worked in music venues all throughout undergrad and grad school and have spent countless hours listening on cheap, poorly set up gear and loving every minute of it. However, after Recently purchasing my first home I felt so compelled to finally build my first real system in a space that was truly my own, and I have really enjoyed the learning process. Hearing my favorite music on a proper reference setup makes it feel like I’m hearing all of my favorite albums for the first time again. This experience has been much more powerful to me than I expected.

There's seriously NO BETTER FEELING.

[MatterG56]

Honestly pretty recently. I've always been interested in sound and stuff like that but it wasn't until relatively recently where due to covid, I kinda have more free time and decided to look into getting a sound system of my own. Still learning and figuring some stuff out but I gotta say it's been quite the fun journey truthfully.

[Ribbontower]

2014. Monmouth stereo red bank NJ. Monitor audio silver one, and an NAD316 BEE.
Record- Copper Blue by Sugar

[BullBuchanan]

2011 or so. We had just moved into a small apartment where my computer setup needed to be close to the livingroom, so I needed to get a pair of headphones to game without disturbing the Mrs, and so I could focus on what i was doing. A few dozen hours over a couple of days later and I was learning what these "open back" headphones were all about. After perusing craigslist for a deal on some used Grados, that was all it took to set it off. Within months the house was filled with audio gear.

[robcraigw]

it started for me when I was about 10 years old, in the early 60's. I remember telling my Dad that we need to buy a new speaker for our hi-fi.  It became my hobby and hasn't stopped yet.

[SoundDecision]

My passion for music came first. I ask for and received a record player at age 6 for Christmas. From there it was buying pop 45s every week of whatever caught my attention on AM radio. By my early teens I built a 35W Heathkit receiver and some Heathkit bookshelf speakers and I was then buying rock LPs I heard on FM radio.

The bug bit me once and for all one evening in 1976. I was 16. I dropped off my parents at a garden club meeting and was given the green light to cruise around town and come back and pick them up in a couple of hours. I wasted no time racing to the new stereo shop that had recently opened. I walked into a shootout between two power amps, one from a competing store down the street. In front of me was two pairs of Dahlquist DQ-10s stacked vertically and as the tonearm dropped down and Carry On Wayward Son struck me in the chest and appeared before me as a wall of sound hanging between those speakers, there was no turning back!

[LarryD56]

   I was in Jr. High in Morgantown, WV in the 60's and there was a record store with a stereo shop next door called Sound Investments. I went in to look at the records, then wandered over to the audio room. The clerks humored us by demonstrating the equipment. I became hooked and frequented the shop after school. I never lost interest. I have enough stuff to open my own shop right now.

  Larry D.

[irappaport]

Hello all,
My passion started at a friends house listening to a hockey game in surround sound.  It was pretty incredible.  I then went to the CES show back in 2000 looking for a good quality surround system and wound up with a two channel audio system.  From there it's been a passion....
Ian

[jakekluge]

For me it was a gradual process.  My dad had a large system in the basement as I was growing up.  He had a Rega Planar 3 TT, a Conrad Johnson pre, and a bunch of Dynakit ST70 amps that he used to power some homemade push pull tower speakers (that used Dalesford drivers for the mid bass).  Whenever I felt brave enough I would try to figure out how to turn the system on, but never could.  I was barely tall enough to reach anything.  But it was the forbidden fruit.  I begged and begged for my own stereo and finally got it when I was twelve.  A Technics SL1200 and a Technics receiver, I can't remember the model.    Hooked for life.

For movies, it was when I realized that the reason there was a HIFI symbol on our VCR meant I could plug it into my stereo.  I plugged, put in the speeder bike scene from Return Of The Jedi, and the next thing I know I'm an audio engineer.

[Big Red Machine]

Around 1974 when I began to play my albums versus my Dad's Herb Alpert and Mitch Miller records on his Utah speakers built into the living room wall with tubed amp and pull out drawer 6 record changer.

Then I bought my own JVC SR301 receiver in 1977ish and HAL speakers in the same room environment because I was working through high school and attending community college so I could afford my own gear.

Then in 1981 after the bachelors's degree I went out and bought some JBL L100's, 2 woofers, a Richter Scale xover, and an Adcom amp from the stereo shop in Oneonta and went straight to a bi-amped satellite system.

Never looked back. Spent the 90's with Acoustats and Hafler amps. Focused on MT in the 2000's until 2006ish when I went all in on Salk HT3's. Have had 33 amps since then!

[rockadanny]

Up till 2005 I had what I considered decent gear from appliance/stereo stores (RTR III speakers, HK CDP, Kenwood receiver, solid copper house wire speaker wires). Then my HK CD player died so I went on-line to search for a replacement, and what I discovered ...  ... a world heretofore unknown to my myopic, pea-sized brain of high-end gear. Extensive searching opened up unlimited selections of gear and possibilities for acquiring. After a few mesmerized months I happened upon a local dealer who demoed gear in his home. Still no replacement CD player, I went there with an open mind ... and he blew it. That got me hooked into searching for all new gear. An audiophile was born.

[twitch54]

Upon hearing the song "In the Year 2525" as a kid

ahhhh yes, Zager & Evans, it was number one the summer of '69 as Armstrong stepped onto the moon ! I was a kid too, albeit a sophomore in High School !

My love of gear / music came about 7 years earlier when I heard my first stereo Lp played on my parents Stromberg Carlson Console Hi-Fi

[Behemoth60]

September 1989.  My first year of university, living in a new city, not really knowing anyone.  There was a hifi store at the mall.  I went there a lot, and learned everything I could from the sales people about the Infinity Kappa speakers on display, and would listen in awe as they spoke about the now legendary IRS speakers.  I vowed to one day own a set of Kappa 9's. That still has not happened for me, but many years ago I did acquire a pair of infinitesimal 0.1's that I enjoy as my computer speakers. 
-Peter Straub

[Squeaks]

It was third or fourth grade. I was in music class, teacher wanted us to listen to something. So he turned out the lights, and hit play.

What Ensued left me speechless. Things were coming from the left, right, center. It was dynamic. It flooded every sense I had, I was hooked from then on.

Track in question. https://youtu.be/4nMUr8Rt2AI

[Jedi9]

I remember quite clearly in late 1969 realizing that a lot of my peers had systems and wondering what the fuss was all about.
 More subtly, my father's influence in knowing something about and loving music was also at work. He was a guitar player, recreationally, but had played for a "living" briefly as a very young man with a country singer named Floyd Tillman ("hard core" country from the 30's forward).
So, I found the most popular hifi emporium in Houston and bought Akai Speakers, Sansui Receiver, Dual Turntable with Shure needle, zip cord wire and was in heaven.

Everything else since then is somehow connected to that beginning and the passion is as alive today as it was then (just bought a new amp, the NAD C298 and my wife of 50 years is gobsmacked at the sound, which means that it's a good piece.

[emyemyemyyy]

My (now fiancé) and I’d second date. We had been talking about music, and he was the only person I’d ever found who “got” it. I had no idea there was a whole community of us nuts! He played me Pink Floyd (naturally) on his B&W and that was the end of it for me. Currently listening to a pair of Vandersteen Model 1 with a Harman Kardon 730,  and collecting too much secondhand equipment.