So, what exactly made you the audiophile that you are?

I’ve been playing music since I was 14 - taught myself first how play a classical guitar. Bass followed (and stayed) 2 years later.
So music has always been part of my life.
I never owned andy ‘audiophile’ equipment before NAIM - all of the boxes I’ve listened to before just sounded lifeless compared to live music. 

The first time I heard  ''I want to hold your hand'' on a large vacuum tube Juke Box at age 11 got me hooked for life 

yeti42 posted:

1. Probably Tom Evan’s fault. I had a simple entry level system(Micro seiki dd24/Sansui AU217/mission 700s) for 10 years until I met him. He was working as a warehouseman with a friend of mine at the time and had a Leak stereo 20 and a Manticore. It wasn’t long before I had a Manticore too. Tom meanwhile was messing around making a pre for the Leak which ultimately led to the Finestra, iso and various Grooves etc. I started a mortguage and by the time I had spare cash to upgrade we’d lost touch for 6 years or so and his amps were too expensive anyway so I ended up with Rega, after a false start with a Nait 5, but went for a CD5x when I auditioned CD players later which led back to Naim.

did you once heard the tom evans linear amps?

I was brought up on Paul Mauriat , James Last, Mantovani...... my Dad was into easy listening.....

It nearly put me off music for life....

Then by chance late one night, I accidentally tuned into Radio Luxembourg on my tiny battery  radio...

wow, I was introduced to some real music....the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd, Genesis....

the tiny radio decided to give up the ghost....

which led to a half share with my brother into a ‘High fidelity’ record player from Woolworths .....

eventually I progressed to Rotel speakers, Jvc intergrated amp....technics deck

then a pause for a good few years as marriage and children came along and money was tight....

than one day I ended up in a Hi-fi shop in Taunton where I was introduced to Naim...

A good question Haim, one that deserves a bit of reflection I think!

Back in the early 60’s, my parents owned a Zenith stereo console, with a receiver and record player built in. The deck was manual, and from about age 7, My Dad trusted me to queue his records: Sinatra, Count Basie, Ella, and so on. That was also about the time I bought my very first record, the  soundtrack from my favorite movie: Thunderball! I loved laying on the floor, with my head between the speakers. Magic!

Fast forward to college, where I fell in with a group of musicians who formed a rock band. I became their manager. Over a four year period, I spent countless hours at practice sessions, informal jams, and paid gigs. We did mostly covers: Dead, Stones, Hendrix, Bowie, and so on. And for the first year or so, yours truly was the lead singer! I wasn’t very good, but at least I remered the lyrics (well, most of time).

For the next 30 years or so, I went to live shows, but rarely listened to music at home. Between work and family commitments, there just never seemed to be any time. Then, about 10 years ago, I had some health issues and needed a way to pass some recovery time. So I rediscovered the music of my youth!  I started investing in Naim gear, and music once again became an essential part of my daily routine. Now, when I’ve had a rough day, music makes me forget about it. When my attitude needs an adjustment, it is a simple matter of selecting the right album. I always feel good after a listening session!

Lastly, it is amazing to me how BIG the world of music is. There are endless hours of undiscovered genres, artists and albums out there, more than enough to fill a lifetime. One need only visit this forum’s Music Room. It’s not only a great way to explore new (and forgotten) music, but it is also a great reminder of how many like-minded music lovers there are in this world!

I can remember two moments where I realised music could be magic. I had a demo of some Spendor BC1s. Joan Armatrading's "Show Some Emotion". The chill up my spine lead me to buy the speakers. Thanks Frank.

A year later a salesperson played me Kieth Jarrett "The Kohn Concert" all the way through. Bought the second hand LP12/Grace/Supex 900. Thanks Nigel.

At this time I was an impovrished uni student. These moments called to me and I ended up joining the priesthood. I quit Uni and began evangelizing for the best Linn/Naim dealer in Perth. First staff purchase... a traded NAC22/NAP120. My transformation was complete. Thanks Vince.

Ever since I saw “The Last Waltz” in a theater in ~1978, I have been trying to reproduce the bass in “Who Do You Love” the way it sounded there.

That album, for all its shortcomings and subsequent bickering among the players, has been a box of bon-bons, to me.

Nick

The love of big black boxes and decibels. 1994 bought my first set up which included Technics amp, cd player, cassette player, equalizer. It's still at my parents' house where it's stood untouched for 20 years. I have to say that I still admire to this day the looks of those Technics decs. True classics. 25 years on and I have gone the opposite direction yearning for a one box solution. Currently debating whether to buy a Star for my 2.1 needs

French Rooster posted:

yeti42 posted:

1. Probably Tom Evan’s fault. I had a simple entry level system(Micro seiki dd24/Sansui AU217/mission 700s) for 10 years until I met him. He was working as a warehouseman with a friend of mine at the time and had a Leak stereo 20 and a Manticore. It wasn’t long before I had a Manticore too. Tom meanwhile was messing around making a pre for the Leak which ultimately led to the Finestra, iso and various Grooves etc. I started a mortguage and by the time I had spare cash to upgrade we’d lost touch for 6 years or so and his amps were too expensive anyway so I ended up with Rega, after a false start with a Nait 5, but went for a CD5x when I auditioned CD players later which led back to Naim.

did you once heard the tom evans linear amps?

Not until recently and not properly. The last time I saw him he was working on them and the output stage was in development.

My local hifi dealer uses a Linear A at home with Tom’s pre and one of the higher Grooves (but not the top one), only for the last couple of years and he still uses mk2 SBLs with it (though is toying with various Audionote Es). I’ve heard the linear A in the shop but not the full TEAD chain with it, I already had my 552 by then and wasn’t about to switch horses mid stream.

As a child in the late 60s, my parents had parties and the jam was cranked from a turntable run through a Heathkit preamp and amp into some huge speakers he also built. Everything from roots country to jazz to British invasion and American rock. I’d lay in bed and listen to music into the wee hours and as I grew older, I came to know that man cannot live on bread and butter alone...he must have...JAM!

Basically building systems on a budget as a teenager taught me how to use my ears to get the very best out of older, cheap and unfashionable components . I had a succession of Garrard and Dual record players which were cheap and unwanted back in the mid 80's and lots of older integrated amps like Sansui, Rotel, Trio, Yamaha, Sony etc were also out of fashion when everyone wanted 'stack' systems.  Add to that big 60's and 70's speakers with 12" or 18" woofers like Goodmans and Tannoys and you had the basis of an excellent budget system.

Firstly and most importantly it taught me what didn't sound good and later on when the big black stack systems went out of fashion and the 'midi' system became fashionable I was able to build a couple of very good systems using the best of the Japanese amps like Technics and although not considered 'audiophile' they were big powerful and built like tanks and suited perfectly the reggae, soul and dance music that I listened to.

Then when I was able to afford to buy better components it was with quite a good ear and it was my very early trials with computer based systems and attempting to digitally record my record collection that eventually took me full circle back building the very best system I can for the money I have and although the 'budget' has got quite a lot bigger it is with the same principles that I used to use back then.

steve95775 posted:

First staff purchase... a traded NAC22/NAP120. My transformation was complete. Thanks Vince.

My first Naim amp was the NAC22/NAP120 too. Not many of those today.

A great question, Haim.  I can only guess others' motivations but for me it was simple. 

I was born with a need to have music in my life.   As soon as there was money burning a hole in my pocket, I bought vinyl and cassettes. 

On leaving home, the first proper music system, a huge, shiny, chromed Hitachi monster of a thing with many buttons, toggle switches and watts of power but no way to play records.  Many hifi magazine reviews later, a visit to a dealer to listen to turntables by obscure manufacturers called Rega and Linn. 

The dealer, Chris Brooks in Warrington, used an amplifier by another obscure manufacturer called Naim.  That was weird because they didn't even know how to fit the amplifier in one box, needing 3 to do the job ...  Yet somehow the system sounded miraculously, captivatingly good.

The rest as they say is history. 

None of it would have happened though, were it not for that innate need to have music in my life.  It feeds the soul.

My wife has no such interest and nor has our son.  Our daughter, on the other hand, does...

FT

About 35 years ago mum used to play records such as ELO and Hooked on Classics every Sunday morning whilst cooking the roast. This was on a separates based system consisting of an Akai TT and KEF bookshelf speakers, but I cannot remember the amplification.

By this time I was very much in to heavy metal and had acquired a number of LP's on vinyl and cassette which I now wanted to play in my own bedroom. I saved birthday, Christmas and paper round money (£3.00 p/w) as best I could.

When I eventually had enough I remember dad driving me to Richer Sounds in Bristol where I purchased a Marantz integrated amp and a Yamaha tape deck. I then added Wharfedale Diamond 4 speakers from Comet and dad very kindly gave me the Akai TT.

Although extremely modest in terms of hifi to me it was the mutts nuts and my room rocked for the next few years.

My first Naim was a Unitilite 3 years ago which has subsequently now turned me into an Audiophool.

Happy listening to all.

Mike

Lots of great stories from people already ... lovely to read

I started by "borrowing" my parents Rogers valve amp and warfdale speakers ...with my strathearn stm4 direct drive turntable ( bought from comet ...well it was £39 and came with an ortofon vms15 cartridge that was well over £20 on its own!)

Gradually added my own stuff (and returned parents kit) till I went to Rayleigh hi-fi and bought rega 3 / Nait 1 / mission 70s 

Loved that little system for years until I could eventually replace it with better stuff ..and I'm still replacing stuff now ...it just gets more expensive

I had a fascination of audio replay systems and used to tinker with them when young as well as making amplifiers and synthesisers in my teens.. like many seemed to back then. At University in the late 80s I got introduced to real Hi-Fi, digital music and DSP and I was hooked.. and there I started to appreciate the differences and why there was good and bad audio replay and in the lab could experiment to create optimum designs that sounded good. This then fuelled a desire to take on a secondment with the BBC in Studio Engineering... that really did get me hooked as I could see how to apply engineering principles to great music systems and studio recording systems (as well as for TV) and it all became very real.

This then paved the way for part of my career integrating and delivering some of the worlds first consumer digital video and music streaming systems in the 90s (back then called VoD and Video Jukebox systems) and later I was then instrumental in the launch of the Sky Digital platform... although my career has moved on into other engineering pursuits, audio has never been far away even now ... and I guess this engineering appreciation of how to maximise a replay system (and recording system) as well as digital audio transmission fuels my passion now.... and as you say the love of music is a given.

This is indeed a great thread and a fascinating read.

I took my wife to a Naim open day at the factory on her birthday, initially I was not very popular. This was back in the time when Julian was running the firm, indeed he did the tour and demo's. Also Naim and Linn were working very closely. I was very lucky because my wife became hooked as did I. The rest is history. Rich 

Foot tapper posted:

 

My wife has no such interest and nor has our son.  Our daughter, on the other hand, does...

Curious how some people don’t seem to be as interested, either in good quality reproduction, or in some cases in playing music at all - and hard to understand whenit is a prime interest in one’s own life.

My wife likes to put the radio on ( a small battery operated ‘transitor radio’) as background music when doing things like baking or ironing (though not when reading). And there is some music that she will happily have on and enjoy being in the room with it, maybe reading a book, while I’m listening - but it is not a driver for her.

One son listens to music virtually non-stop when he can, mostly downloaded onto his iPhone and playedmostly through ear buds, thiugh he has used headphones. Music also downloaded onto his computer which, together with accessing mupy collection across the network, he plays through  IMFTLS59 speakers (my original ones), computer audio output as source, with an old AR60 amp. He has expressed interest in improving that with a better DAC, but not done so (yet?). Oddly he never plays very loud - odd to me because I always have myself!, and he was brought up with it - or maybe that’s the reason he doesn’t! Since his iPhone became able to play flac he changed to downloading flac, appreciating the improvementeven through the earbuds. I think there is hope for him yet!

Other son plays music from time to time but seemingly less (to npbest of my awareness), and has expressed no interest in playing through anything other than earbuds or, occasionally, his computer surround sound supystem (which is a very basic one). However he is more interested in musical instruments and making music.

Foot tapper posted:

A great question, Haim.  I can only guess others' motivations but for me it was simple. 

I was born with a need to have music in my life.   As soon as there was money burning a hole in my pocket, I bought vinyl and cassettes. 

On leaving home, the first proper music system, a huge, shiny, chromed Hitachi monster of a thing with many buttons, toggle switches and watts of power but no way to play records.  Many hifi magazine reviews later, a visit to a dealer to listen to turntables by obscure manufacturers called Rega and Linn. 

The dealer, Chris Brooks in Warrington, used an amplifier by another obscure manufacturer called Naim.  That was weird because they didn't even know how to fit the amplifier in one box, needing 3 to do the job ...  Yet somehow the system sounded miraculously, captivatingly good.

The rest as they say is history. 

None of it would have happened though, were it not for that innate need to have music in my life.  It feeds the soul.

My wife has no such interest and nor has our son.  Our daughter, on the other hand, does...

FT

Likewise, I bought my first kit from Chris Brooks. Still going strong but mainly just selling just LINN equipment now I believe.

Never forget that first ever ‘real’ demo where Chris explained the source first philosophy and then proceeded to swap boxes over, trying different permutations of what worked best within the budget.

Managed to stretch my saved income from an evening and weekend supermarket shelf stacking job to afford a Rega Planar 3, Nytech 202 and Monitor Audio R252 (preferred to Heybrook HB1 and still have them despite box swapping). Chris did tempt me with a rather lovely Nait, but at the time it was more than I could afford. Managed to scratch that itch a few years later!

Disappointing Chris Brooks stopped selling Naim. Why? Pressure from LINN I wonder.

I was immediately interested in anything my dad was doing.  0ne of the first shared interests, around my age of 6 or 7, was listening to music - first on a Zenith mono console and later on a Zenith stereo console unit and also on a portable transistor radio.  From that point forward, always tried to have the best equipment I could afford - but that equipment has always been relatively modest, certainly by forum standards.

Walking in to Doug Brady a million years ago, and seeing the disorganised boxes, and hifi parts laying around, speakers here and there, stuff i had never seen before, seeing a demo room for the first time, listening to Doug and staff talking hifi language, bloody fascinating, and captivating, letting me have a listen to a naim system, hearing the clear openness of music, and the weight of the Bass punching me in the body, an Audiofile in the making. 

I started off at the age of around 9 or 10 with a small transistor radio listening to Radio Luxembourg in the far North of Scotland, and occasionally recording the odd track on my dad's Philips mono reel-to-reel recorder. Strangely, we got better reception from Radio Luxembourg than from any British based music channel, and the music was just great. But my real interest in hi-fi as opposed to just music came with a rare visit to the closest decent record shop around 50 miles away from where we lived. The guy at the counter put on an album by a singer I had never heard of ("Songs of" by Leonard Cohen). I was listening to and enjoying the track "Hey that's no way to say goodbye", and can remember vividly being startled and completely spellbound when out of the blue the beautiful female backing vocals appeared from the opposite side of the shop to Leonard Cohen's own voice. It took me a while to figure out that this was what a stereo system could do.   

My parents couldn't afford to buy me a stereo system of my own, so I didn't get my own first stereo system for a year or two after this. However, from around the age of 15, I started subscribing (or rather my mum paid for the subscription) to 3 hi-fi magazines - 'Practical Hi-Fi & Audio', '[@mention:48028104101952367] and 'Hi-Fi Answers'. I've been hooked ever since. 

It started as a 5 year old playing with my parents radiogram.It was one of those units where the 7 " singles would drop down after the last one was played.I had 2 older sisters and there was always lots of Beatles and Rolling Stones to listen too.I loved the music I was hearing.My dad had a reel to reel and he encouraged me to use the microphone attached to it,to record my friends voices when they came to visit.

I think this was where my love of tape stemmed from.By the time I was 18 I had a LP 12 and Nait and Linn Kans threw exposure to a friends dad's sisters system which had a LP12 and Quad amps and ELS 57's when I was 14.I remember hearing this set up and thinking it was amazing.So I started buying Hi Fi magazines hence buying a LInn with money saved from my first job.All my mates where buying their first cars but I sunk my spare cash into audio.

The interest in audio still interests me a great deal - I think a large collection of records,tapes,compact discs dovetail the love of music.

I'd been given a Sony record deck and amp by a friend who was "upgrading" (electronic VU's in place of ones with needles).
I then bought some speakers from Dixons, Celestial Ditton 22's and I thought it all sounded great apart from "jitter" from the record deck from any slight imperfection in the record pressing. It didn't actually sound all that great.

After a couple of years, I was taking an engineering exam and bumped into an old school friend who, I remembered, was into "odd" hi-fi.
He suggested I go and listen to a Rega Planar 2 at Sound Advice in Loughborough. I could hardly believe my ears and I was hooked.
I bought the Planar 2 and loved it.
A few weeks later I bought some Royd A7 speakers and later, a Nait 2.
Each time I visited Derek at Sound Advice, I got to hear other equipment until I bit the bullet and bought a 72 / 140 and a Linn LP12 plus a pair of Linn Kans.

It all started getting horribly expensive after that!