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:
I got into the hobby because I’ve always been broke until recently and my family I had always been broke.
When I got my first job it was minimum wage ($8 an hour. This was in 2019-2020) it was the first time I’ve ever had money in my life. And since it paid so low, I had to make sure I spent it correctly.
My family has always gotten cheap everything, and they all had Chinese rip off airpod clones, and all I had was a gaming headset I plugged into my phone. They kept telling me how great Bluetooth was, and how I should get some fake Chinese ones like them.
I eventually decided I would just save up and get real AirPods, and the entire time I was saving I kept hearing “why are you going with that Apple stuff? It’s probably made in the same factory anyway so you are just wasting money”
I pushed through and got my real AirPods eventually, had them try it, now they all have real AirPods
And it was so worth it. The real AirPods blew me away! It started the addiction, and I decided I had to get the best.
Before I knew Bluetooth wasn’t the best audio quality you could get, I tried several Bluetooth headphones. From the AirPods Max to the Sony xm4 (which I had to pay through monthly payments through my mom, and started my debt cycle I’m still stuck in) But something was missing. I did more research and discovered SOUNDSTAGE.
The closed back pairs just sounded too closed in, and I soon discovered open back headphones. I desperately wanted to try them, but I was strapped for cash. I eventually was able to afford the grado sr60x, and they blew me away. Those sent me down the rabbit hole to where we are today.
TLDR: being broke forced me to research more, and the more I researched, the more I became aware of higher audio quality.