Planting the seed to audio.....

treitz3

What got me started in the hobby was listening to my Uncle Tommy's system when I was 8 years old. He had this little tube amp that was probably no more than 8 watts powering a set of home-made corner loaded Klipsch Klipschorns. It was at that very moment that a seed was planted.

Fast forward a couple of years and I finally talked my mom into giving me her modest stereo system that consisted of an LP player that stacked LP's, a Scott receiver and a pair of Scott speakers. Within 2 years, I had replaced the entire system and 2 years after that, I was the first in the neighborhood to have this new thing called a CD player. One of those that had a 6 disc cartridge and an additional CD tray.

Fast forward to today, I have come within easy reaching distance of achieving everything I had ever wanted out of a system, many aspects of which have far surpassed what I had ever thought possible out of a rig.

Where was your seed planted and have you planted a seed yourself?

Tom

Nightfall

My dad had SDA 2.3's and a bunch of consumer DBX gear that he bought in Germany while in the Army. I couldn't have fought it if I wanted to.

nooshinjohn

My uncle was a military trained electronics guy from the Vietnam era. He built and modified his own gear, mostly Hafler, Heathkit and Dynaco. His system was what got me started, but working at Magnepan for a couple summers while I was in high school started me down the rabbit hole for good.

drumminman

Went to a boarding school, and my sophomore year a guy down the hall came back from Christmas break with new KLH model 24 system. Speakers, KLH branded Garrard tt, and tuner. Man it sounded great!

Was my initial inspiration.

pitdogg2

My uncle had a stack of Nikko stuff. Big power amp, tuner, cassette deck and platter. I recorded a ton of tapes on that thing.

codycatalist

Hmm I dunno, music has always been in my family. My grandfather designed and built his own car audio amps. I got into car audio before home audio, my first taste of good home audio was my uncle who had SRS2s with an adcom stack.

Now I have 2Bs with an adcom amp ha! Sure I would like to get something better but my upgraditis has slowed down and I haven't purchased anything audio related in over a year easily. I don't plan on getting anything new until I get a bigger home.

I do have a pair of Monitor 5Bs and a vintage Marantz (not the good ones) that I am saving for my first born. I used to have a DJ Ortofon cartridge on my Pioneer TT, I had my daughter putting records on at 5 years old.

OldmanSRS

At 7 years old 1965 my parents bought a big Magnavox color TV stereo/turntable/FM radio/ console thing. It was all vacuum tube stuff and had dual 15" "air suspension" woofers and a pair of horn tweeters. I listened to the Beatles Abbey Road and more... I was hooked. In 1969 I made my own HiFi for my room, a wooden box of 3/4 plywood and installed a 15" woofer and some kind of horn tweeter and ran it off an old tube guitar amp and a tube FM radio. I was in heaven.

In 1973 I bought a Radio Shack turntable, receiver and some mid priced Optima speakers with the proceeds from mowing grass all summer. Every few years I would upgrade something on the Radio Shack home system to a slightly better component but never close to the realm of audiophile.

In 1975 I designed from scratch two, 50W "real" RMS/channel car stereo amps (before there was such a thing) for cranking disco tunes from a cassette deck in an old Ford LTD. Every few years I would upgrade something on the Radio Shack home system to a slightly better component but never close to the realm of audiophile.

Finally in 1988, I had saved just enough to get into better sound. I bought the SDA SRS 1.2's, a Carver M1.0t amp, Adcom GFP-555 preamp, and a Sony CD player. I transferred to Dhahran Saudi Arabia and took it all over there with me, and then back to the USA in 1995. I have continued to acquire odds and ends (cheap) ever since and have put together one of the best sounding systems I and others have ever heard, in the garage/shop! Better even than the 1.2's in many ways. My mind never stops experimenting and working on something new.

I thought you might want to see that 50W/ch car stereo amp. I designed the switching power supply and wound the toroid transformer. The inverter runs at 28 kHz and puts out 130W, -/- 45V than it's rectified and regulated to +/- 35V. The power amps are a pair of Sandken modular amps. I made the printed circuit boards by taping copper clad board and etching in the bathroom sink.

displayname

My dad and his best friend where very into their stereos while I was growing up. That's where the seed was planted.

We didn't really have any true hifi shops in our area, so we didn't even know what the real high end was, but I remember my dad bringing in new amps and CD players pretty regularly. I was into getting my own gear as soon as I got an allowance. It probably started with the classic red Sony Walkman kids cassette player and headphones while I was in early elementary school. Growing up we also had a family tradition on Sundays: go to church, go to lunch, go to Blockbuster Music/CD Warehouse/FYE or some other music store. We generally would each come home with a CD. When Napster came in and stores started shutting down I would still walk to a little local CD store that was hanging on.

As a kid I would save my allowance and right after my birthday I'd get a new, bigger stereo with the money I'd saved + birthday money. At one point I had full surround sound in my bed room. Nothing properly set up or hifi, but I loved it. I also invested in some higher end Sony headphones which stayed with me for years as well. Those were probably my first taste of "real" hifi and I didn't even realize it.

Went to college and stepped away from audio because it was just too expensive and MP3s + ipod was just too easy. Had to sell off the bulk of my CDs for next to nothing to help ends meet at one point. Got a record player for my 30th birthday, and that reignited the fire. Plus I was working at one of the big audio companies which made the barrier of entry much more affordable. Replaced my entire system, yadda yadda you know the rest of the story.

afterburnt

Mine was my Sansui, Pioneer, Kenwood system that my dad let get stolen when I was 15. Only recently did I start to take out my frustrations and now I have a bunch of systems. It's kindda like my frustrations when my dad wouldn't buy me a Red Ryder BB gun, I go a lot of those "systems" now too.

jbreezy5

I didn’t grow up with a ton of money, but I can remember back to my childhood spending copious amounts of time trying to perfect creating a great mix-tape on my mom’s rack stereo system. I wanted to get the tim between songs just right, and not run out of room on a side.

But doing all of that made me realize the difference in SQ of some cassette tapes vs. others. Not to mention how various tape imperfections highlighted the importance of SQ in playback. Then of course CD happened, and over time that technology improved, yet analog always had a certain something in terms of naturalness, but technical accuracy and consistency stood out on the newer format.

In other words, I had OCD the whole time but didn’t know what to call it; only to find out later that the term “audiophile” already existed. 🔊😎

Music that got me hooked were Cult of Personality (which no one would listen to in the car), Epic, More Than a Feeling (first concert), and ...And Justice For All (album).

There was no going back.

OldmanSRS

codycatalist wrote: »

Hmm I dunno, music has always been in my family. My grandfather designed and built his own car audio amps. I got into car audio before home audio, my first taste of good home audio was my uncle who had SRS2s with an adcom stack.

Your grandfather and I share some traits. I got the bug from my dad in the mid 60's. Then in the mid 70's I was designing and building high power car amps using inverter switching power supplies making 150 watts before there were readily commercially available amps. I tinkered with building systems piece meal through the 60s, well still do... Also got deeply into personal car stereo using my amps in the disco era and well into the late 80's. Interests reverted back to home audio again in '88 when I bought the SRS1.2's with Adcom and Carver components. Still have all of those and have been collecting speakers and amps ever since. My most recent success is the multi speaker 3-channel system in the downstairs garage/workshop. I think it's one of the finest sounding systems I have ever heard and so does everyone that's heard it. One of the serendipitous advantages is that the room size, construction material and acoustics just really click.

I found a pic of one of the 50W/ch true RMS at 8 Ohms inverter amps that I built in 1976. The boards and switching power supply/regulation were my design and execution. I made the inverter transformer and bi-filar wound it on a pair of 88 mH telephone line balancing baluns. The inverter is a saturable core design and runs at 28 Khz. The power amps were new tech in '75, integrated amp chips from Sandken. They made two version, 10-30 and 10-50. Both put out 50W rms from a +/- 40VDC supply but the 10-50 did it with less than 0.1% distortion and the 10-30 was less than 0.5% distortion.

A few years back I bought a severely whipped Adcom GFA-555 with a 'Musical Concepts Modification" off Craig's list which I resurrected, reverse engineered the MC mod for future use, and drive the 1.2s with it now.

Some pics of the home made car amp circa ’76. I made the PCB’s by taping copper clad and etching in the sink.





The Adcom after its revival. I added the small board on the left for speaker protection.

mlistens03

A few years ago my grandpa on my mom's side showed up with a small onkyo stereo that he found at a garage sale for a few dollars. It was a TX-V940 receiver (Which I used until a channel went out long after my upgrade path began) and some Onkyo speakers, forget what.

I used that system for probably 2-3 years. Then we went to an audio shop while visiting family in Norway, and I heard some great speakers there. I forget what they were, but by my memory of their looks, they were Dalis.

As soon as we got home we went to our local flea market and I bought my Mission 770s for... $75? I used them for another year before I bought my LSis and I really fell hard into the rabbit hole.

As far as planting seeds... I gave a friend of mine an old Sony ES AVR and some JBL J220s I think? He hasn't Fallen into the hole yet as far as I know, but the seed is planted. I also gave another friend an Onkyo (very similar to my first) and the Missions, and he has definitely taken to the hobby. He has upgraded his cables and when he has the dough wants a new receiver.

So much for a quick post.

-Micah

erniejade

From what my parents said, when I was 4, they had to buy me a regular home stereo. I would play records soo much I would wear out the kiddie record players every 2-3 months and burn them up so to save money in the long run, they bought a realistic turntable and receiver. I think the receiver was only like 20 watts per. I kept that system till I was 15 and changed to a new technics turntable and used Marantz 1060, used set of Coral speakers. Then around 17 I sold the coral's picked up Jensen LS6 speakers, changed carts on the technics from a Shure 35 to a Ortofon OM10. Its all been downhill from there.

My parents never owned a stereo. Mom had a cassette player that she would play her Jonny Mathis and Carpenters on. They had an AM radio in the 1973 Gremlin. I have no idea where the seed got planted.

Viking64

erniejade wrote: »

My parents never owned a stereo. Mom had a cassette player that she would play her Jonny Mathis and Carpenters on. They had an AM radio in the 1973 Gremlin. I have no idea where the seed got planted.

In the back seat of the Gremlin?

erniejade

Viking64 wrote: »

erniejade wrote: »

My parents never owned a stereo. Mom had a cassette player that she would play her Jonny Mathis and Carpenters on. They had an AM radio in the 1973 Gremlin. I have no idea where the seed got planted.

In the back seat of the Gremlin?

Now that's funny! But they got that new in 73 and I was born in 68. Maybe the 63 chevy they traded in for the Gremlin?

dromunds

My parents purchased new a very small console with '59 Telefunken tubes from a radio shop in Clintonville, Wisconsin. (I never knew how it was acquired until my mother told me this recently) My Dad had every Hank WIlliams Sr. record and my mother had every Elvis and Everly Brothers record. I played them all the time. They bought a Zenith stereo in the mid-60's and put the old console in mothballs. After my father died a couple years ago, I found all the various '59 Telefunken tubes from that old console in his desk, he had taken them all out for safe-keeping apparently. When I started playing Jimi Hendrix on that Zenith stereo the old man flipped out. Soon it was in my room and I was playing Electric Ladyland every morning before junior high, and I would hear him yelling "Turn off that Beatle music!"

audioluvr

Freshman year of college. First day walking into the dorm and bunch of guys with stereos competing for the loudest room. Spent most of my college mad money on a Carver M500t, C-2, Technics turntable and a pair of Polk SDA 2B's.

mhardy6647

erniejade wrote: »

Viking64 wrote: »

erniejade wrote: »

My parents never owned a stereo. Mom had a cassette player that she would play her Jonny Mathis and Carpenters on. They had an AM radio in the 1973 Gremlin. I have no idea where the seed got planted.

In the back seat of the Gremlin?

Now that's funny! But they got that new in 73 and I was born in 68. Maybe the 63 chevy they traded in for the Gremlin?

The back seat of the Gremlin was... pretty nominal.

pitdogg2

mhardy6647 wrote: »

erniejade wrote: »

Viking64 wrote: »

erniejade wrote: »

My parents never owned a stereo. Mom had a cassette player that she would play her Jonny Mathis and Carpenters on. They had an AM radio in the 1973 Gremlin. I have no idea where the seed got planted.

In the back seat of the Gremlin?

Now that's funny! But they got that new in 73 and I was born in 68. Maybe the 63 chevy they traded in for the Gremlin?

The back seat of the Gremlin was... pretty nominal.

They were freaky....nuff said

dromunds

Yeah, when did "nominal" seat room ever stop anybody?