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First hifi experience...

About 1979, aged about 13 years old, my best mate (still is) and I used to thrash his dad’s hifi when his parents were out.
Pioneer deck, amp etc. and I think Tannoy speakers. We used to sellotape a sheet of newspaper to the front of the speakers (on the grilles) and turn up the volume to make the paper move. It was a detached house, and we went for it.
Before that I used to hang out in the D.J. booth at a Friday night youth club disco. My Dad ran the youth club, so I would stand with the D.J. and watch him work, all Carlsbro equipment as I recall. (local company) A couple of times I got to start the nights music, I loved getting people up to dance. And it was loud. I was about 12 years old, and most of the youth there were much older than me.
My Dad would bring home the ‘disco’ lights sometimes, some disc with coloured oils that rotated as a bright lamp projected through it. He also made some flashing coloured bulb units that I would play with.
Not really HiFi, but I was hooked on playing music that made folk move.
We didn’t have a decent stereo at home, a BSR something.
 
Went to university in 1976 and immediately spent my grant on a PL12D/M75ED, a Yamaha CA610 and some home-built transmission lines using B200s and Audax tweeters. Had to live on bread and water for the first term but it was worth it. We had some great parties.
 
Growing up, it was the ubiquitous Dansette (a blue one), but my first proper hi-fi was a Trio KD1033/Alba UA900/Videoton Minimax.
 
My first exposure to hi-fi was as a school boy in hi-fi shops at lunchtime. At the height of the stereo boom the modest town I went to school had three hi-fi shops. Two of the three were fairly tolerant of schoolboys passing the time in their shop whereas the other would swiftly ask you what you wanted in order to get rid of you. Different times.
 
For HiFi it was my parents radiograms that sparked first interest. The first was a Thorn, sloping control panel with sliders and backlit radio tuning scale. In hindsight it was very naff but seemed fun at the time. This was followed by a very swanky Philips in silver, with green, lit scales for everything, completed with good speakers and sounded very decent.
Finally one of brothers bought an Akai TT, amp, cassette deck in silver with Wharfedale speakers. That was it, sounding fab, I was in awe and had to have my own!
 
I'm not convinced I've had one yet...

In the 90's my dad had a Pioneer(?) stack which didn't really make much of an impression on me one way or the other, aside from the fact that it could get louder than my Sony boombox. Likewise for whatever his stack of silver components was that he had in the 80's. I don't think much effort was put into either one. I was otherwise only exposed to cheap Aiwa all-in-one-stile "hi-fi" setups.

In the 2000's I had some studio monitors, as did friends, and they sounded good, although at least in my case in hindsight I had a major mismatch with the room. Throughout the late 2000's and until last year, I was mostly a poor grad student and then academic, so the best I had access to were some AKG k240 headphones, some Creative computer speakers that it turned out blended the two channels for strictly mono output, some soundbar (Yamaha, Panasonic, something like that) and then a Cambridge Audio TV5 soundbase.

In 2019 I was visiting some friends up in Edinburgh and he had a pair of very nice studio monitors set up as active speakers in his living room. No idea what model, but they made me realize how much I've been missing out on when listening to music. Things like, y'know, good stereo imaging. Last year I finally pulled the trigger and bought some admittedly low/mid-range gear to get started: Naim NAP150/NAC112 (not really knowing much about Naim beforehand), Cambridge Audio Dacmagic 100, SoTM sMS-200 NEO, and Dali Oberon 5's. A few weeks ago I also got some Focal Shape 50 studio monitors for my desk.

Those are good, but I still have no idea if they constitute a true "hi-fi" experience because I have no basis for comparison. The Naim setup is far better than the CA soundbase, but I have literally no idea how much better it can get and what "better" even means here. I doubt I'll ever be in a position to really find out either...at least if I remain in academia. ;)
 
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My (older) brother @Mark Packer ruined things for me ~11yrs old- iirc, Ariston RD80 + Linn Basik, no idea what cart; Quad 34/405-2; Tangent XLR2 monitors and ... music we still both enjoy to this day :)

... what goes up, must come down; what must rise must fall; and what goes on, in your life - is writing on the wall...!

Very nice post Martin, and the tune from APP nice as well!
 
First time for me was a friend's Linn Axis, K5, Basik Plus Arm, Creek 4040 (I think) and a pair of bookshelf speakers (no idea). Pinned me to the wall. Fabulous stuff.
 
Me and my brother were music obsessed as kids. Never really thought about real hifi but loved Sony midi systems that I upgraded as and when we got broken into. The world of separates opened up to me when I wandered into Richer Sounds a bit by accident in about 1988. Pored over their catalogue for hours and put a really nice simple Cambridge Audio/Arcam/KEF system together with holiday job pay.

It sounded amazing and I'd happlily go back to it today if needs must. Could replicate it off Ebay for about £150!
 
The first time I heard really top-draw replay was in 1973 when I visited a retired watch repairman with my father - they were friends. I was eleven at the time.

He had a Quad ESL, Quad II amp set and FM radio plus a Garrard deck. I suppose it must have been a 301 as it looked old fashioned even then. It had a stereo compatible cartridge for mono replay from stereo records.

We listened to some Radio Three on the tuner. Sutton Coldfield was the then, as now, a first rate VHF/FM sending mast. Then I played over the whole of Schubert's Great C Major Symphony on HMV LP with Barbirolli and the Halle, which was then only about four years old as a recording and very good both from the musical aspect and as a recording. That was my first LP, given me for my tenth birthday.

So a classic mono Quad set. It knocked the spots of the best I had heard till then, which was a big school gramophone and worked two ten inch full-range Goodmans paper drivers mounted on a heavily braced open back plywood baffle. That was actually very good in a large room though it had obvious deficiencies compared to my experience [yes I started young] of real concerts. The Quad set managed to seem very close to the concert experience.

I heard another Quad valved set with a Thorens in 1987, but this time stereo. It was good but not as good as the mono set. Perhaps the turntable was less fine?

Anyway they say that the end of the journey is returning back home where you start. ... My current radio set is a Leak Trough-Line [clearly as fine, possibly finer than the Quad tuner I heard in 1973], a Quad II Forty mono valve amplifier, and a single ESL. This will do till I quit this mortal coil.

Best wishes from George
 
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Mine was in the '60s, at boarding school. I volunteered to run the AV in the Great Hall (1667, the hall, not the AV).
It consisted of all Quad: Quad II tube amps, tuner and preamp and a big old Garrard deck, running a huge pair of theatre Wharfedale speakers. I spent hours listening, and that experience was instrumental in my surviving that school's abusive environment.

Last year I finally got a pair of original Quad IIs and they are now running my ls3/5a as my end system.
 
First time hearing real hi-fi was in James Kerr's showroom in Glasgow circa 1962. Garrard 301, SME 3012 with Decca ffss pickup fitted via an adapter, their own Kerr-McCosh pre and power amps (Google helps here), and Lowther TP1 Corner Horns.

The phrase "I was blown away" has deservedly become a bit of joke these days, but back then.... :eek:
 
Around Christmas 1970, I pestered my dad into getting me a proper stereo (as opposed to the ancient Magnavox console in our living room). We went to Lyon & Healy in Chicago, a well-known manufacturer of musical instruments who also sold a limited range of audio equipment in their showroom. We selected a Fisher 115 compact music system with BSR turntable mounted on top and Fisher XP44B “Little Giant” bookshelf speakers. It was delivered on Christmas Eve, and I spent the holidays playing one record after another, stunned and delighted by the sound. Nothing I have heard in the years and decades that followed has ever matched that sense of joy and excitement.
 
At university, where part of my English degree was American Arts, one of the lecturers brought in a tape of Muddy Waters recorded i the 1940s by Alan Lomax. He played it on a Sony reel-to-reel machine through Quad pre/power amps into a single Quad ESL57 speaker. I nearly jumped out of my seat when Muddy started singing. But it was several more years until I owned anything remotely resembling hifi.
 
My first experience of audio was my parents system, which was a Garrard SP25 Mk.IV, running into an awful Amstrad amp (IC2000 I think!) and a pair of Wharfedale Denton 2s. Thought it was amazing as a kid! I was then given a Quad 22, Quad II and a Quad II copy by my Grandfather when I was 14, along with a pair of fairly large 3-way speakers (some brand Tandy sold IIRC). That was probably my first introduction to decent sound :)
 
Mine was in the '60s, at boarding school. I volunteered to run the AV in the Great Hall (1667, the hall, not the AV).
It consisted of all Quad: Quad II tube amps, tuner and preamp and a big old Garrard deck, running a huge pair of theatre Wharfedale speakers. I spent hours listening, and that experience was instrumental in my surviving that school's abusive environment.

Last year I finally got a pair of original Quad IIs and they are now running my ls3/5a as my end system.
Goodness ! That was a good starting point, even as per today’s standards !
 
Around Christmas 1970, I pestered my dad into getting me a proper stereo (as opposed to the ancient Magnavox console in our living room). We went to Lyon & Healy in Chicago, a well-known manufacturer of musical instruments who also sold a limited range of audio equipment in their showroom. We selected a Fisher 115 compact music system with BSR turntable mounted on top and Fisher XP44B “Little Giant” bookshelf speakers. It was delivered on Christmas Eve, and I spent the holidays playing one record after another, stunned and delighted by the sound. Nothing I have heard in the years and decades that followed has ever matched that sense of joy and excitement.
In 1978, a father’s friend of mine bought a Technic SL 1200, a Fisher receiver and some Large Advent speakers.
Didn’t see my 12 years old friend for a whole week as he did spin records all day long non stop as well !
 
Goodness ! That was a good starting point, even as per today’s standards !
Yes, and it's rather ironic that I ended up with such 'dated' classic stuff! Considering that I have encountered quite a lot of modern components and speakers. I do use a passive with the Quad IIs, they hugely benefit from no active preamp, if the room is the right size.
 
Marantz PM 55 amplifier, Rotel 965BX cdp/Aiwa 410 cassette/Denon Tuner with a Rega 3 from somewhere s/h.
Speakers were Mordant Short 3.20?
Purchased new from richer sounds London Bridge. Everything that came before couldn’t really be classed as Hifi.
Within a year I had a Quad 66 system with Impulse speakers.
 
1971/2, brother's system Leak Delta 30, Richard Allan Pavannes, Garrard SP25/Goldring G800, a couple of years later it was Thorens TD160/SME 3009/2/Ortofon M15E Super(Metrosound?) Rogers Ravensbourne Amp/Tuner and Tannoy 12" corner Lancasters.
 


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