the gateway product that turned you into an audiophile

Actually it was a complete system that did it to me...The original Marantz CD63,a Creek 4040 integrated amplifier and Celestion speakers in 1982 at a dealer in Mill Valley,Cali...
 Up until then I was blissfully content with my Pioneer receiver,Infinity speakers & some POC turntable..Even though I wasn't crazy about vinyl I hadn't been won over by CD either..When I heard that system I was instantly & irrevocably converted...

@jsalerno277 I did watch it. I did not know most of their story, especially that 3 of them were married and had a kid BEFORE Led Zeppelin was conceived. They are amazingly modest and sweet and also passionate and talented. Somewhat similar to the Queen story. 

What is stunning to me is how they (Beatles, Stones, Who, Zeppelin, etc.) were all born during the war and grew up in dire times and under circumstances straight out of a Dickens novel. My childhood was very modest with barely enough food, but still a step up from those conditions. 

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.

As far as gear goes, it was either the used pair of Aragon Palladium II’s I picked up, or the moment I switched to a Dynavector 10x5 Mk II cart. 

Additionally, I was of age when CD players first came onto the market, and I remember playing my first CD and marveling at the clarity, the punchiness, the lack of noise and the ability to immediately scan to other tracks. I remember hearing my first SACD, and my first recording at 24-bit depth instead of using 16bit ADATs. 

I remember the first time I played through a proper DAC as opposed to a crappy consumer-grade one (I even remember the DAC; it was an old Universal Audio 2-192), or when I switched from mixing through old Digidesign 888 units to an Apogee AD8000SE...  I remember the enormity of the piano tracks that suddenly sounded real, and marveling at how the hell I could have tolerated the muted, dull sound I was getting on the poorer 888 units. 

I can’t help but add my own to this one. My introduction was 1969 with my friends hand unit Dynaco 70 with a pair of 15 inch Jensen’s, as I recall, unmounted sitting on the floor. I heard my first taste of musicality in that experience and have not stopped my own quest since.

We are now much older and he has never stopped building and searching for life’s experiences in all aspects, including this speaker for a mono system he’s