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What was your Ah ha! moment in becoming an Audiophile?
By
bhazard451
Mikie2501
5
Jan 28, 2021
Let's do a bit of time travel!
I was about 22, (my memory can be pretty fuzzy a lot of the time, but let's guess in a three year soon there somewhere, hehe!) And I was working twelve hours graveyards on my feet in an unairconditioned, unheated commercial printing press shop (picture those newspaper presses!), No breaks and you ate your lunch while you worked! Ysy!
Because of the bus schedule, and me wanting to make damned sure I was always early to work, not late or just 'in time'.
(I could never stand just getting there and going right to work, I liked to make coffee, check what was running on every press, if we were ahead or behind, what problems the presses were having, when the trucks were due to pickup, talk with dayshift and get the lowdown, etc)
... So by the time I got home, showered and ate, I was usually lucky to get six hours sleep. I don't know how, but that's the way it usually turned out, lol! ... Well, throw a little time in for doing maintenance on my BBS and doing some dial-up BBS calls to play my favorite door-games! :)
I did say time travel, right? I'm 53 now, so just think of the time when I wore a pager on my belt, back in the era when if someone saw you with a pager they either assumed you were a business man, or a dealer. You can guess which one I was made for, lol. Imagine riding your bike down the sidewalk and getting waved over by a stranger asking if they could but a quarter from you, rofl!
So most of my free time every day was spent on the bus or at the transfer station waiting for a different bus. No cellphones back then to play with. (My buddies first 'portable' phone was in a shoulder carry bag, it was so big! His second, handheld model, was the size of a brick!! All out of my price range, lol!)
So what's a guy to do? It was either nap, (always made friends with the driver so he/she would wake me at my stop!) Read, (I think I cleared a few scifi/fantasy book sections!) Or listen to music. Better yet, do either while listening to music!
I originally had one of those cheap am/fm rape players like you would now find in any low cost store, like Dollar Store or similar, with the little on the ear headset with the foam pads.
I used those for a while but after many trips to the mall wandering around I had set my sites on my little dream player, a Sony Walkman. Am/fm , fm narrow Too I think, whatever that was! The cassette player also had Auto reverse!! Just awesome :). It was compact, sleek and beautiful and for a poor bastard like me, living in a $195 a month, all bills payed apartment were part of the weekends night entertainment usually included either gunfire or an ambulance showing up, or both, hehe, well this was a big extravagance!!
The sales guy was trying to sell me some fancy headphones, but I told him I was fine with the included foam jobs, but he insisted that I at least listen to them. I figured I would, just to shut t him up so I could get out of there without being ride or short with him.
Glad I did too. He didn't mess around with any of the cheaper ones either, he went right for the good stuff! They were beautiful and big! (Well, for the time!) Leather headband, all black except for this red label on each side, over the ear cushions and a fold up design to store in a carry bag. 1/8" Jack with a screw-on, all metal 1/4" Jack, and a really long spiral-Slinky cord!
They were Sony MDR-V6's, and when I put them on, listening right after having listened with the included headset, well... I. Was. Blown. Away.
Yeah, NO other way to describe it! I popped in a cassette of whatever I had and did the test again. Wow! I switched over to the local classical music station, closed my eyes, and it was like I was sitting in front of the orchestra!
It was an experience that I can't even begin to properly describe!
Imagine being born and raised in some place like Arizona in the 1930's, never having left your home town. No lakes in sight, then Dad loads everyone up, drives to California and parks the car in the beach, and you see what you've only read about at school. The Ocean! Salt water as far as the eyes can see!!
Sensory Overload!
It's funny, I wore them everywhere except work, hehe! On the bus was the best, listening to music and reading, plus I got to ignore the people always wanting to talk to you! Double win!!
Then I noticed something strange. This black guy I ride with every day that sits about half way back, he shows up wearing a pair of Sony cans! Huh.
The next week this old white lady (ok, she was about my age now, lol. Young people vision, lol!) Shows up with a pair of Sony cans on too! Huh!
Before the summer was over there were at least a dozen regulars that had either switched from cheap foamies to Sony or other brand name over the ear or on the ear cans, or people that hasn't listened to music at all showed up with quality cans for their music players!
It was really quite amazing!!
I loved those Sony cans!! Then one day they disappeared out of my apartment. I knew it couldn't have been my roommate, he was a fu*kup, but not totally stupid. Pretty sure it was one of my "friends". Ugh.
I didn't replace them then, I don't know why... But last year I got to thinking about then again and started searching through Google images, trying to find them. I couldn't remember the model, but I remembered what they looked like! Finally found them, then found them on Amazon and threw money at the vendor as fast as I could! Hehe :)
Life has been strange over the years, I haven't really spent a lot of money on audio gear (well, that used Technics stereo from the late 70's, pretty awesome!) Other than a few pair of cans, and a VentureCraft slip on amo for the hand-me-down 2nd gen iphone from my wife, hehe.
An upgrade portable music player with built in amp is on my list, but house projects (solar panels, solar hot water (gonna build that!), High seer mini-split a/c's) and my main hobby, amateur (HAM) radio, (towed and big antennas are expensive!) Really suck up my play money! .... Well, mostly saving up for everything.
... Still, I'll find an excuse to spend money on a dap soon, or put it in my Christmas list for the wife!
Gee, that was long winded, hopefully somebody enjoyed it though!!
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