What is your "audiophile" age?

[Psittac]

How long ago did you get into the audio world? (no limitations on definition)

[Psittac]

I'll tell my audio story because I feel like typing, might as well wander on the keyboard for a bit.  Feel free to skip and post yours.

 

When I was younger my mom hated when I played music loud, the bass always bothered her.  Still I can remember riding around in the back of our 1978 Monte Carlo while she played all of the 80's hit's.  At a pretty early age I got a stereo for my room and my oldest friend would sit there on the phone with me both of us listening to the radio and he would tell me what song's to record on tape.  I soon got a discman and those cheapo Sony headphones that came with the discman were on my head at all times, usually riding in the back of a car with my parent's because they traveled for work and the kids were brought along.  Then I turned 16 and put a deck, 6x9's and a sub in my first car and that CD collection came in clutch, just driving around listening to music while that same friend was the DJ.  He taught me that music was bottled emotions.  I side stepped into the rave scene which ruined my life due to the drug usage and an encounter with that same friend.  But I never removed the music from my life.

 

Then in 04/05 when I had built my first computer I also got a pair of Sennheiser HD465 from newegg on a whim and this was my first "hifi" experience.  I had been in solitude for 2+ years due to the drug usage but I curled up on a bean bag chair with that same old discman and listened to Dieselboy Dungeon Masters Guide and it was like I was listening to it for the first time.

 

I decided or rather remembered that music was and had been very important to me.  I spent the next 10 years using every spare dollar I could get my hands on, if it wasn't spent on fish it was spent on audio.  I built a Klipsch/Denon Home Theater and once I had that I figured it was endgame.  6+ years ago I moved and needed an actual desk instead of putting my battlestation infront of my TV so I got the sennheiser one headset and that kept me for a couple years.  Then came the HE-400i topping DX7 combo and that kept me for a year or so, then all hell broke loose.  I've had over 20 headphones with multiple amp's and dac's in the past 2-3 years.  As I've matured and my job has become more stable audio is one of my major hobbies, always trying to recreate the feeling of hearing music new and for the first time again.

 

Shout out to the Koss KPH30i with grado pads, that has the characteristics of those old sony headphones but they sound great.  Spent the entire first day I listened to them with them on, moving from PC to phone back to PC then I hit up my friend that lives less than a mile away, walked up to him with them still playing, unplugged them and said here take these.  I couldn't take them off and someone else needed to hear them.

[cmndr]

Bought DT770s and HD280s around age 21ish. 
I can say that the HD280s are trash. They also fell apart on me and never sounded that amazing to me. 
Got HD598 headphones around age 22. Much better than the HD280s. Different feel from the DT770s.
I want to say I got HD800s around 24ish. At this point I stopped buying headphones, other than a Sony XM4 for travel/wireless/ANC/video call use. It's for "good enough" use cases where it's nice being able to walk around. 


In terms of speakers... around age 25 or 26 I hooked up an AVR with some Pioneer BS21 speakers. 
early 30s I went off the deep end with speakers and I'm kind of "done" for the moment. I dug into tactile transducers lately. They're "good enough" that they make my girlfriend feel anxiety if they're turned up. She likes the rumblies... but only when they're barely noticeable. 

If/when I buy a place I'll convert a garage into a huge man cave. I'll see if I can get a used Sony 13 channel system (they're still a bit TOO new but they do amazing things for positioning - I'm not paying $3300 for a new one when my AVR is "good enough" right now) and go crazy with a 9.4.4 set up. What I have is solid right now other than that I need to make a few small config changes. 

I'm lucky enough to be at a point where I can get whatever I feel like, I'd just rather be able to retire by 40 than to have a bunch of stuff.

[H713]

Me? I designed my first speakers at age 17. First tube amplifier at age 18. First solid-state amplifier (that didn't detonate) at age 20. And ironically... it took until almost 23 before I built a headphone amplifier. I didn't build a headphone amplifier until after I had built a 400 W, 100 kHz bandwidth power amplifier.

 

In case it isn't obvious, I like hardware more than I like the music. 

 

 

[191x7]

I'm 36. I had a Walkman type device in the mid 90-ies. Not an original Sony Walkman. Good enough for tapes.

In the early 2000s I got a radio with a a cd player. And I had a portable Coby CD player (like a Sony discman).

Cheap non in-ear earbuds were the rage at the time. And cheap headphones for the PC (which had some basic Trust speakers).

During my university education I used a laptop and changed quate a few headphones, headsets, buds that came with phones...

And then came gaming headsets (Creative Fatal1ty HS800) and in-ear earbuds like the Panasonic RJE 120. And MP3 players...

Then, in 2013, or was it 2014, I bought the HyperX Cloud Pro headset, those are the first "audiophile" headphones I got (they are the Takstar Pro80).

After that I tried a bunch of things and settled on the Sennheiser HD 560S a couple years ago. Those are still my main headphones.

A year ago I got into the cheap chifi IEM-s. And a couple months ago I got an Akliam PD4 amp&dac after years of using various onboard sound chips and external soundcards.

Future plans - more IEM-s.

 

@Psittacwhere are your IEM-s?

[Stagea]

34 minutes ago, Psittac said:

How long ago did you get into the audio world? (no limitations on definition)

Been into electronics and audio gear since I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. I used to fiddle with whatever we had at home. My dad had HiFi systems and I got hand me down components when I was in high school (aside from the portable stuff that all kids kind of had then). Audio (both home and mobile) has always been one of the things I spent on when I started earning for myself in the early 00s. While I understood electronics (like how amps work, electronic repair and mobile audio installs) before this, it's only around 2007 (27 y.o. then) when I started to really put effort in learning acoustics and human hearing. This is also around the time when I started having measurement equipment and being serious about getting my systems to sound "correct." My spending on audio started to rise at that point and peaked at around 2011; it's taken a slow decline since then. 

[Psittac]

2 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

@Psittacwhere are your IEM-s?

Your posts have made me wonder the same thing.  Been pondering it a few weeks now, was going to make a post....... so that's what imma do now lol

[rice guru]

 

TL DR: been I to music whole live but friend got me interested in audio gear at age 14 I'm now 24 so about 10 years old.

 

 

I was always a music kid in elementary school I got gifted a Sony walkman mp3 player and had a lot of music my  22 year old uncle really liked loaded on to it by him. It was a great mix of local indie, alternative rock, hip hop and pop , I would happily listen to all this music with whatever headphones or cheap checkout aisle I'm ears I could get my hands on. Getting a walkman instead of an ipod should be telling if what my socioeconomic status was as a child. 

Got into audio in highschool probably at 2013 friend let me listen to his hd 598's fiio e10k combo and that headphone perplexed me. The lack of bass made me reject them at first but hearing details for the first time was what really opened my eyes to just more expensive headphones. I knew I myself needed something like this as I was someone who has also tried beats which were really popular at the time more popular than now and as much as I liked the bass response cause I was a child that pair also perplexed me cause it kinda sounded bad even for my inexperienced ears but I didn't have an idea of what is supposed to sound good till the 598. Me and him continued to bond over headphones and I would wear whatever I could get my hands on . I was poor and broke so I would use anything after all the biggest audio upgrade you can get ever is just getting access to sound. And access was more important to be than gear after all music is more important than gear. 

 

Fast forward to college. I have extra cash from grants and I pirated all my textbooks so I was looking to upgrade my gear overall. Had to replace a pair of $50 Phillips closed backs which in retrospect actually still sound good very balanced laid back for a budget closed back. And went for a pair of akg k240. Why the akg k240? I had a friend reccomend it to me and the few reviews int he internet at the time seemed to praise it for my use case. I needed something comfortable with a wide soundstage and good build quality as build quality was really important for me as a kid who was in the go all the time in college. While you may think it doesn't necessarily fit all those categories for the price I was willing to pay for audio at the time I was great and I was happy with it. If you want me to elaborate I can drop a review. After college I get into PC gaming and want a audio upgrade. I start hearing about the dt 990. I met a few guys now into audio and start consulting with them they argue it's not the best but for my use case at the time since I was focused on gaming audio they reccomend the 250 ohm and fiio e10k. Which is the generic gaming reccomendation at the time. I get my fiio e10k first test it out with my akg k250 and get blown away by how much the headphone changes with proper power sure it's 55 ohm but really low sensitivity and that's where I start researching and all these things about power, impedance and sensitivity start making real sense to me. Which is a shame cause I took a lot of electricity related courses in college so it's plenty lot of the stuff I already knew. But never really experienced it audibly. Next 990 shows up. Sound wise I had my problems but got used to it's sound signature and really learned to appreciate great soundstage and it's excellent imaging. 

 

At around this time.i start getting into reddit and forums start digging deeper into reviews.start hearing more and more headphones through local guitar stores and friends locally. Hifiguides forum also starts up by z reviews. I joined early and met a great core group of people who us as a group have also made our own forum where we discuss audio though it has more of a focus of high end audio. But that's getting ahead of myself. In hifi guides I meet discuss and learn more about audio. Watch more YouTube videos then I get my liquid spark and this is where I learn about gear pairing and how neutrality isn't king. This is the point in my journey I realize I wasn't an audiophile.  write my impressions, then the he 4xx's write a review, then I get my 58x's write a review,then I start going into LTT help other beginners out try to suggest what I know to the best if my ability, the. Hey  the monoprice m570 (these are trash) write a review.. get more gear and write impressions. I even had a year there where I got obsessed with budget audio and spelling a fair amount of cash  buying budget audio gear to just come to the conclusion the the ksc75's are GOATed and all I need in budget audio. Years of doing that I now found my happy place in audio still try gear out even had a few companies gift me free stuff to review or send feedback on or be part of their beta test program.  So I started at about 13 I guess now I'm turning 25. I'm now just going back to music first and now with all the gear I accumulated I'm just trying to build up my music Library and knowledge. 

 

So current gear I own( or at least the ones I want to list too much sub $20 iems and earbuds that I could not be bothered to list)

Headphones: hd 58x,he 4xx,hd 650, dt 770 600 ohm, dt 880 600 ohm, dt 990 250 ohm (modded), nighthawk carbons ,fostex X00 purplehearts, koss ksc 75, koss kp40i , koss ur40,koss porta pros

 

Speakers: micca rb 42

 

amps: topping pa3, monolith liquid spark, monolith liquid platinum, schiit Asgard 3

 

DACS : topping d10, liquid spark dac, bifrost 2

 

IEMs (that I actually use): antlion kimura iem, tin t4(my all-rounder and general favorites right now) , guideray gri 58, final e3000, and Galaxy buds pros for work

 

Portable source gear :fiio q1mk2, fiio btr5.

 

Mic: audio Technica at2005usb cause I'm too lazy to deal with an interface. 

 

 

[Omon_Ra]

I've been playing music since 1st grade, so music in particular, I've had a bit of an ear for. There's two directions my audiophile tendencies go, one is at home, one is larger format PA systems. As far as audio gear goes, I've always been a 'budget' or 'bang-for-the-buck' audiophile. I guess it started with our 3rd or 4th family PC that came with a set of 2.1 Boston speakers. That was probably the first time I had a sound system that I realized the importance of a subwoofer with music. My high school graduation project I replaced the stereo system in my car, which is when I really got a better understanding of sound systems, wiring, resistance, wattage, etc...not to say my car was studio-accurate sound, but hearing the difference between factory and after-market, plus a sub, was eye ear-opening.

 

I got a 5.1 Logitech sound system for my college computer, which was great for my dorm/apartments. I played in a band in college, which is when I really started to get a handle on larger format sound, and understanding the importance of sound quality. I also helped with the college concerts, so I did help out with some large-scale PA installations as well.

 

I picked up DJ'ing ~2012 or so, and with that came a desire to deliver better sound at my gigs. I realized 99% of people at a bar/club/event don't care about sound quality..until it's really bad. They don't always realize why they're uncomfortable or slightly irritated, but it's usually because of a too damn loud system for too small of a space, or just generally bad audio quality (could be the PA or shitty YouTube rips..). I started going to music festivals not long after starting to DJ, and the desire for better live sound for my own gigs kept being pushed. I have cobbled together a pretty decent PA for cheap, though it's about time for upgrades. It's a ProReck Club 3000 with a Behringer 15" sub. Behringer crossover (free), BBE sonic maximizer (also free), and an Allen & Heath Zedi10 mixer. The biggest weak point now is the sub, I really need to upgrade that for a Yamaha or something with better SPL and 'low end punch.' I don't need to bring a PA to most of my gigs now, so the few that I do, it's fine. Last summer I got to play on Funktion One's for the first time, which for me is the best of the best when it comes to live sound, so that was immensely satisfying. I mix on turntables, though use Serato DVS. I do have quite a bit of vinyls, it's just what I DJ and what I buy/listen to on vinyl don't always mix well. Nearly all the music I play now is FLAC, with 320kbps mp3's when FLAC isn't available. I do have some lower bitrate stuff, but it's usually older tracks or I try to avoid playing them at all if possible. I am planning on designing/building my own PA subwoofers (and full PA system eventually), though time/money is a bit short, but it will happen.

 

On the home-side of audio, I worked for an AV company for 5 years, wiring, installing, and programming home theatres, home networking, etc. Through that job I got my current home setup that was all nearly free. Totem Dreamcatchers front left/right and center which were a birthday gift from my boss. Klipsch surrounds and subwoofer (the sub I paid for, but deeply discounted). Yamaha RX680 from a lightning struck house (HDMI's are dead, everything else works fine XD). I got my girlfriend a set of Definitive bookshelves for her turntable setup for super cheap as well. For headphones I've got Sennheiser HD7 DJ's for DJ'ing and Philips SHP9500's for at home. There's not much I really feel the need to upgrade, the receiver will probably be the first thing to replace, I'll be getting another Yamaha though I do know that. Eventually the surrounds will be swapped out, but it's really not that pressing of an issue. The Totems do the bulk of the lifting, and I love how they sound.