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:
Nice post. I think I’m reading that you don’t have any analog sources After you tweak the tubes, take a shot at improving your source