What made you become an audiophile???

Crikey, I'll take that as a compliment...

Like Andrew I look at myself as a music lover rather than a audiophile.

When I first got my Pioneer amp and Marantz tuner I felt so proud. I suppose the hi-fi, even now, is one thing I can say is mine as opposed to paying loans back to banks. That said, after a few years I just played music and excepted it as a utility item. Only since I bought the Leema have I regained that excitement I first felt in the late 70s to early 80s.

at first, it was the music. Grew up listening all sorts of music from all over the world. my father had big Akai reels, separate Grundig components ( amp, castte deck, turntable), Technics cd player etc. I didnt pay much attention to music quality altough i was able to recognize a good sound. But it happened when i was 40. I was in a department store, electronics area. one guy was listening to a Yamaha A-S something combo with some Wharfedale bookshelves. I approached, stand in front of it and amazed by clarity and that sense of immersion in music. I started to read and research. Did lots of demos as i travel a lot and see many hifi shops. So, at 42 i got my present gear, building a system in my living room and another one in the attic. But still looking for an amp/source for the Spendors.

I am now going through that phase where wife cries that i spend too much time listening. Although i am only doing that during the day when she is not at home. She is not at all into this stuff. Most of my friends think that i am a bit mad spending that much on audio. some even sit down, listen andsay that the bass is lacking, there is no boom-boom feeling (and why, since i payed so much), why do i listen to such low volume and why i do not allow them turning the volume all the way up the same way they do on their karaoke system. Then i have difficulties explaining the reasons, feeling frustration for not being understood. then i see that it is impossible to educate all people and enter Zen mode and dont care, stop trying to change them etc.

but i stil love listening to it every day and it brings me joy every single time.

so, i believe all these make me an audiophile

My first system was a Binatone back in the early 80s.

Remember those stack systems? with the record deck on top and the amp, tuner and twin cassette deck in one box underneath designed to look like seperates with a glass door and a place for the LPs at the bottom. hehe!

Then went over to a mates place and heard his Kef reference speakers and was blown away. Although I was a teenager with no money at all I would, after that, go and audition hi-fi wherever and whenever I could, spinning all sorts of yarns about how I had some money left to me by my dear old aunt and getting dealers to set up expensive seperates in there listening rooms week after week.

Sorry if it was you!

my brothers fault, he bought a gorgeous sansui seperates system in the late 70's from harrow audio, he went in with £500, next minute we were walking down the high street with a hi-fi, loved the looks ever since, i now have three systems, 70's pioneer and 70's technics and 90's marantz, thanks bruv !!!

I'm partially sighted and so my main pleasure is listening to stuff (one sense making up for another sort of).  Mainly music, but not always, I like spoken word on the radio as well, such as radio 4 dramas.  And if I'm going to listen to music/audio, it has to be on something good.  Poor-quality audio irriates me to the point where I want to turn it off, even if it's a favourite song.  I can't stand it. My dad was also a HiFi nut as well, so that's almost certainly part of it.

I'm with Major Fubar- I can't listen to poorly-reproduced music, sooner have silence. Had a separates system in the kitchen at my old pub which used to make the lunch shifts a real blast...

Still, I got into hifi when round a mate's house, aged 12 or so. His older brother came home, and put on Freddie & Montserrat's 'Barcelona'. I still remember the system- Technics SP-PG477A CD player, Yamaha AX440 amp and Mordaunt Short MS3.10 speakers- and it blew me away how such a sound could come from such tiny speakers. That was it- got a CD player first, Philips CD604 which I used at first through my existing Saisho midi system (33/45 LP deck, twin tape with hi-speed dubbing, a whopping 10wpc output), with some Celestion County speakers, donated by my techie Uncle Pete. Sounded very good, to be honest. Then got a Rotel RA930AX with my birthday money and savings, then finally some Mission 760i. 

Job done, me hooked...

To add a detail, I owned the Saisho- it was a Christmas pressie or something.

It didn't have a CD player, so I remember buying What Hifi, to look for anything better than the horrible Goodmans things at Argos. All the great looking kit caught my attention, and I became a regular reader. The folks eventually bought me the CD604 on WHF's recommendation, and it was brilliant.

I still have a large pile of WHFs circa 1991-96, stashed at me mum's house.

So the crux of the matter, is that I most probably became an audiophile because of What HiFi?... 

Paternal grandfather was a Chief Engineer (yeah, I know, someone will be along shortly to say the BBC doesn't have "Chief Engineers", but in the 1960s, in Bristol, when the "Old Bar Steward" - as he was (dis)affectionately known - barked...).  Paternal grandmother was a concert quality (Edwardian middle class, youngest of 8, etc. etc.) pianist.

My dad built his first hifi (audiophile - he had separate pre and power amps even then) in about 1964 from instructions in a magazine and some, erm, technical and logistical support from the BBC.  Amazing how so many broadcast quality valves failed in those days...

I got the bug from buying Suzanne Vega's first album on CD, along with the Philips CD player to play it on, in about 1986.  To use a WHF cliche' it was "night and day" compared to the Technics SL-BD22 I was using - and still have BTW - but which has been in my grandfather's attic for the last 13 years.

PS paternal grandfather (the BBC one) died in 76 at just 72 or 73 years old.  He'd already done 17 years (14 of them front line) with the RAF by the time WW2 broke out so didn't have to go back in.  Half a lung (asbestosis) left, but went swimming, caught pneumonia, goodnight Vienna.  Maternal grandfather, deaf as a post since spending most of WW2 in submarine engine rooms, will be 97 in September.  Just goes to show...