I think the foundation was laid at 3 years old, playing my parents’ collection of 45s on an RCA 45-EY-3 changer with a tube amplifier.
I believe that this seminal and extensive listening of rock and roll, blues and pop music with a tube amp set my expectations of what the realism of records should be. In the late 60s, my first dissatisfaction with an audio playback item started when we got a brand new solid state GE record player and really good new albums from my aunt for Christmas. Not only did it sound thin, but the voices didn’t sound realistic when I compared the 45 of the Coasters Searchin’ on the RCA vs the GE.
Like this but ours was burnt orange:
In 1970-1971, I got into reel to reel using my dads Panasonic he was using to practice for the Columbia School of Broadcasting:
Our TV was an old B&W Hoffman that had an RCA jack that I would connect to one output channel of the tape recorder to get a richer sound with more bass from the Hoffman than the little speakers it had builtin.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/d8/73/a1d873f172facc69fca189c5ee9d772e.jpg
I bought a Tom Jones 7.5 IPS reel tape, but would also drag the machine to my aunt’s apartment where I’d record Abbey Road, Santana, and my mom’s Tom Jones albums on blank tapes my dad got cheap from work. He knew a guy that was taking unwanted computer tapes, slicing them to 1/4” and selling them cheap. She had a really nice looking and sounding KLH FM/Turntable with a Koss headphone adapter. I frequently listened to her records on that system and it sounded great.
These are the headphones and adapter I listened with the KLH:
Basically using cheap crap for my whole childhood. My parents have a very nice system, but they really don’t use it much, as they both work 10+ hours a day 5 days a week, and I was just given junk. I then got beats for one Christmas because they were super in at the time and after going from those to Sennheiser my eyes were opened, and I slowly discovered higher end gear. I’m still broke for the area I live in, but when I do get extra money I have slowly upgraded my gear and my system is now the best it’s ever been. I look forward to further upgrades in the future and I really try to help friends find better gear options when they are looking to purchase audio equipment
I hope you don’t mind some unsolicited advice about something I’m so glad I did.
Two brilliant things I did;
In 1978 when I bought my super discounted system, I was just a kid and couldn’t hear subtle differences like now, but I bought the best phono preamp and best cartridge we sold at the time. Then, I bought the best cassette deck and best tapes we sold. Those recordings are still unbelievably good. In college, I accidentally stumbled on a cartridge/phono amp combo that brought out the best of every system I’ve owned since and would cost 5 figures to be as good. Every speaker, Headphone, amp upgrade brings out even more detail and fidelity.
I also bought first/early pressings of records. I lived in LA and bought every Queen from ADATR-Jazz, Pink Floyd WYWH, The Wall, Neil Young Zuma-Rust, Eagles Greatest, Doobies Greatest, etc. on the day they were released for good pressings. I also bought or ripped DVD-A, UHQCD-MQA, SACD, and BluRay Pure Audio discs to WAV, FLAC or .dsf files to have the highest resolution content available. I also rip CDs of the best mastered copy of content which isn’t always the Remastered or hi res version, BTW. I kept my reel to reel tapes and ripped those.
Because I stumbled into an exceptional cartridge and phono section, I get my records thoroughly cleaned then record them at 192khz/24 bits for albums that are only available on CD, or well mastered records where only a shittily mastered digital copy is available. Nilsson Schmilsson comes to mind.
If you have the best copy and the best source hardware, it’ll sound good even on a crap system