Any Young Audiophiles Out There?

Cool Hanaleimike!! My son still has so much to learn!:-) It's so great seeing just how much my son loves music. I feel sad for kids that don't get this exposure to music and good sound at an early age - I think it really does start this early!

I'm 32 and bought my first system when I was 21, shortly after my friends and I dropped in on the one and only hi-fi store in our little college town. We happened to have some favorite CDs with us--I remember the first thing we cued up was SRV's In the Beginning, through some electronics I don't remember and a big pair of bi-polar Definitive speakers--and it was a revelation. Despite the fact that I played guitar and owned a tube amp, it also marked the first time I'd seen a tube amp for audio--I wanted one.

By the time I'd saved my pennies, unfortunately that store had had to move out of its prime downtown storefront and into a tiny space in a strip mall miles away. Still, for $1000 I bought an NAD/KEF setup that kept me happy all through my low-paying post-college years and grad school. It's only in the past few years that I've gotten more into hi-fi as a hobby and caught upgradeitis--and gotten friends into it, too, as they've heard my system.

Part of my point here is that I wonder if as more brick and mortar stores close the kind of chance encounter I had is disappearing and with it some of the potential to grow the high-end. I am encouraged, though, because I teach on a college campus now and after a few years of Bose everywhere I see lots of students walking around with Grados and Sennheisers hooked up to their iPods. And when I use the Stereophile article on mp3 compression as an example in my tech-writing classes, a good number of students are already wise to lossless and uncompressed audio. I think the iPod via good headphones and uncompressed files is already leading more and more young people into the high end. And the current hipness of vinyl doesn't hurt either. Here's to it!

Hens, Hanaleimike,

I had no idea about high end audio until my dad brought me to Quintessence Audio in Morton Grove IL. I was 15 at the time and as soon as I saw the amazing tubes and wonderful speakers I was hooked for life. 10 years later my wife Ania and I started Nawrocka Distribution. Yes I am 26 and my wife is 25. We represent some of the finest Audio products in North American and I can honestly say I would have never started my own business in audio if it wasn't for my dad bring me to a high end audio store. My wife and I relax most weekends and through in our favorite CD and just listen for hours with the lights out. I think the key is not having a TV in our front room. All you have is the stereo.

Cole & Ania Hatfield
Nawrocka Distribution

first audiophile system by 16, (magnepans to a jolida tube amp), 26 now.... two audiophile systems, enough in the closet for at least 1-2 more systems, enough cables for 5 more systems....

hmm... I need to clean out the closet!

I delivered newspapers and mowed lawns in elementary and junior high school to buy my first Technics receiver and Infinity Qa speakers, which I upgraded to an SME tonearm, Grado Signature cartridge, Hafler amps and Magneplanars by the time I was 15.

30 years later, I still treasure every spare minute I can find to read, study or experiment with the 4 systems and spare components now in my house, and still love to discover some new music or revisit favourite old music.

I may be wrong, but my sense is if I grew up listening mostly to hip hop and/or the Jonas Brothers none of this would have ever happened.