As a teenager living at home I gradually bought myself what I thought was a high-end system: mainly Yamaha and a Denon integrated amp with a pair of Mission 707s. Later sold all that when I moved out and lived for years with one of those 90s mini systems (a Kenwood in my case). Then when I finally bought my first house I decided to get serious and one day hit a tent sale at one of the largest specialty audio shops in the city. Laid eyes on a used Proceed PAV and AMP 2 and knew nothing about them. But since they were “obsolete” (and affordable) and still pricey used I figured it was worth buying…had no idea about the Mark Levinson lineage either, and no listening session. Brought them home, plugged them in and that was it. Which made me then upgrade it with a used matching digital decoder/DAC (DSD) and an Amp 3 - wanted a be-all system for music and home theater at the time. Over time upgraded my modest speakers to some ProAc floorstanders and had my first real taste of what my system was capable of. Think that was finally when I realized why people spend large amounts of money on this stuff. Which has gradually led me to my current (again used) equipment which out of sheer curiosity now includes tubes in the form of an ARC preamp and C-J amp (biamped with my still-going-strong Proceed AMP 2). For me half the fun is the online research and shopping, but realizing for yourself what others write about makes it all worth it. Hearing is believing.
the gateway product that turned you into an audiophile
@foggyus91 suggested/pushed/encouraged me to start a thread about this. It was related to Darko's post about 12 audiophile misconceptions. One was that we are all about music - vs gear. I think that subject has been chewed up already a 100 times. I am not sure anyone has anything new to say.
However, that made me think about the day I turned into an audiophile.
It was when I bought my first "gateway" product that was affordable but audiophile quality and led me to explore more and tweak and switch and experiment and never be fully content but always be smiling when I turned the power on. It's been about the sound and not the music and that's fine. But I realize now that those Monitor Audio speakers I bought from craigslist were my gateway drug 
Were you always an audiophile or was there such a moment and a piece of hardware that made the difference?
(Lastly, I am very uneasy and on the fence about this forum and starting a thread - for my last correspondence with the moderators. What I learned should bother anyone who cares about fairness or even the appearance of it. I can't discuss it because it will get removed - I tried, my comment lived for less than 5 minutes, )