What one product has redefined music for you??

Magnepan .6qrs. I'd never heard anything but cone/box speakers before, so when I picked these up on a lark for $300 and stuck them in my system I was astounded that the performers and performance sounded so much more real and present. Although the .6qrs are gone, I haven't looked back from stats/planars (at box speakers) since.

TRL ST225 Int amp. Music plays like never before in my room

DBX 3BX dynamic range processor.

When a particular recording sounds flat and just ain't happening due to compressed dynamics, a touch of this gadget to your recording during playback is like adding a touch of zesty chili sauce in order to wake up your favorite dish.

It can also help lower the noise floor a bit when things are quiet.

The day, at age 21, in 1982, I walked into a dealer and heard a very large set of Acoustat electrostatics with the Acoustat amps playing Joni Mitchel's "Court and Spark", a recording I was very familiar with and right then and there I thought I died and went to heaven. Never before heard anything that real(for a while at least).

The Beveridge speakers long, long ago, later the Quad 63s, again later the Sound Labs.

I agree that electrostatics were also an eye opener for me, and probably the best product i had ever come across. However,there is that other fine line which they did not quite cross over. The ability to unravel like never before all the important musical messages that make up a piece of music with the right emphasis on timing tone dynamics that make up each and every note which then brings forth the cohesive piece all correctly ordered as per the original. When I heard this then the startle factor was probably as much if not more than when i listened to the Quad electrostatics. I know of no other speaker that has transcended hifi in such a way.

MAPMAN, I have been realising more and more in recent years that studio /professional audio is as good if not better than home HIfi. They appear to be generally a lot cheaper than home hifi and often have the ability to be far more neutral and accurate sounding than its counterparts. I am now taking note of equipment such as equalisers that I would have frowned upon several years ago.

In 1974 at age 14. I had a demo of the Klipsh La Scalas. at Harvey Electronics on 45th Street(RIP) Playing Stevie Wonders Is'nt she Lovely very loudly. I was hooked on high end audio for sure after that.

Ohm F loudspeaker.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Audiojoy4,

It would be hard to come up with good recordings if not I would think. If the stuff used to make and monitor the recordings were not good, that would surely cramp the home listener's style. Having good home equipment might be considered overkill.

The dbx is an old school analog device that was popular and sold commonly in home audio shops mainly in the pre-digital analogue days, along with tuners, phonos, and tape players. They can be had used these days for just a few hundred dollars and a properly functioning unit will work even better with digital sources when needed.

That's not to say that there are not other probably superior newer digital domain processing devices out these days that can provide greater flexibility and effectiveness when applied correctly.

I'm convinced that a lot of the magic associated with the better digital players, the DCS of the world for example, has to do with how the raw data coming from the source is processed in the digital domain. I haven't had the time to experiment, but I'm certain there are excellent outboard digital processors available to anyone today capable of applying various noise filtering and signal enhancement algorithms to digital sources in a similar manner at lower cost for those adventurous enough to give it a try. Playing with digital signal processing devices on my system is on my list of things to do someday when I have the chance.

Klipschorns. I bought them on a whim, then changed everything to make them work. First real detail and imaging.

I hope your friend kept the Ohm A. Very very few pair were sold to consumers.

Unfortunately the designer Lincoln Walsh, who died in 1971, never lived to see production of both the A and F.

Bill, yes, I should have mentioned the Ohm F! They had that Heil tweeter, didn't they or am I mixing things up?

Hi KD,
There is no Heil air transformer on the A and F. Both were full range "Walsh" drivers comprised of 3 separate sections made from paper, aluminum, and titanium. The A is 18" and the F is 12". Both consumed more horsepower than the output of any 60's muscle car save the L-88 option.

I know at least one manufacturer, RTR, that used the Heil air motion tweeter extensively in the 70's.

OK, this is really a separate topic and sorry to get off course.

The Apogee Apogee.

it was an rca tv set, and i saw the beatles on ed sullivan......there may be some kinda tree trend here, my brother-in-law just replaced his beloved maggies(over a decade old) with a pair of jvc floorstanders with wooden cones....he's diggin' 'em. he's in ohio, so i haven't heard them, but he rarely talks to me about hifi or music....until now

Quad ESL (original and 63s) defined HiFi for me. I heard the original Quads at a HiFi show in the UK in the 70s, at the same show I also heard the Yamaha NS1000Ms. I purchased a pair of NS1000Ms few years later and still have them in service. Moving forward, a bit, first hearing of the Apogee Divas told me, this is what HiFi is all about!!!!

I have had many instances where one product redefined music for me and thought I might be able to say that one stood out. I failed. Certainly walking by and hearing Infinity ServoStatics stopped me in my tracks. Hearing them later with ARC Dual 75s and the SP-3s stopped me buying anything more for nearly four years. Much later hearing the Beauhorn Virtuosos with their Lowther drivers and NO crossover again stopped me from buying much for several years, until I heard the Combac Reimyo PAT777 300B amp on them. Wow! Finally, I have had several smaller but clearly important steps in improvement in the H-Cat P-12 line stage resulting in the final product. The H-Cat amp is the final experience which has redefined my musical reproduction.

I would love to have my 1970s ServoStatic/ARC/Linn tt with Decca London available in an identical room with my present system. I think that the new is far superior, but I would like to see how much.

Walking into a room of real music produced by Apogee Scintillas.

Funny, seems the common denominator are the tweeters & planers. After I bought my Infinity Renaissance 90's I re-did everything else in front of them. The ribbons in those speakers will put a female vocalist in your lap, so to speak. Not to mention guitars & such. Ahhh how sweet it is.
-John

Weiserb, I think that was 1976 for Isn't She Lovely from Songs in the Key of Life. Yep, what an album for all time.

Electricity.

Interesting how many people mention Apogees. Stages were my first high-end speaker, so I know what they mean. I think everyone hear should try an hear them once somehow. There is a certain truth to them that is uncanny--even the cheap ones.

MAybe Apogees will make a comeback with the advent of more affordable class D amps capable of driving them.

Product? Do you really mean "redefined music" or "redefined musical reproduction"?

The events and things in my life that have redefined *music* include seeing Rostropovich play cello with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra twice, seeing Buddy Rich drive his big band, Phil Keaggy play guitar, the L.A. Four (Shelley Manne, Bud Shank, Laurinda Almeida, and Ray Brown) at the Lighthouse in Redondo Beach. Events where world-class artists showed the amount of musical expression that could be derived from various boxes and tubes made of wood and metal.

I also had revelations when my brother got rid of his laminated cello for a semi-handcrafted one from Germany made of solid panels of maple and spruce. I had a similar personal epiphany when I was able to ditch my POS Kent drumset for a 1965 Ludwig Super Classic and Avedis Zildjian cymbals. These acts demonstrated how a better instrument could help you become a better musican.

If you mean audio, then the first significant event was in 1969 when my older brother (at that time a freshman at the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati) decided to free himself of the boomy thick-sounding ceramic-cartridged family living room stereo console by saving up his money and buying an Electrophonic component stereo with built-in 8-track and separate acoustic suspension speakers. It took him another paycheck or two, but next he brought home a mid-level Garrard record changer with Shure magnetic cartridge and a 9V battery-powered Cal-Rad magnetic preamp to feed the Electro-Phonic.

Sure, it's laughable by today's standards, and even I came to realize within a few months that there were much better stereos to be had. The speakers were about 8x11 and had whizzer cone tweeters. Speaker wire inputs were RCAs. And yet it was a liberating experience. It was worlds cleaner and more articulate than the console stereo. You could position the speakers for a real stereo image. Bass was clean and tight (relatively speaking), and the light-tracking mag cartridge pulled more music out of the grooves than the bakelite monstrosity on the family console.

That experience instantly turned me into an audiophile. By 1972 I'd bought my own first stereo at a much higher standard and expense than my brother's--an Altec-Lansing compact with 44 wpc, a $100 Garrard SL-95B w/12" platter, and Altec 887 8" 2-way acoustic suspension speakers. It cost a whopping $419, $2055 in today's money.

Within 3 years I was working at a mid-fi/high end store in SoCal. In mid-fi we had Garrard and Dual, Yamaha, Marantz, and Kenwood driving Advent, JBL, lower-level ESS. We had Tandberg, Revox, and Nakamichi. In the high end room we had B&O, USA-made Marantz Pro, Accuphase, Crown driving Dahlquist DQ-10's, Ohm F's, ESS Heil AMT-1b's, etc. The coherence and time alignment of the Dahlquists presented a new standard in imaging.

Perhaps the most significant experience was when I worked at a store that brought in the late genius Jon Iverson with his Electro-Research class A amp driving speakers of his own design. I never, ever had heard such immense, dynamic, frequency-extended reproduction in a stereo to that point. It redefined what could be done with records played by and through the right equipment. There was an ELP album that had a passage that made my jaw drop. The amp in question was rated at only 70 wpc into 8 ohms, but it doubled into every halved load and was stable down to 0 ohms. He had it drive two huge sets of 4-ohm speakers wired in parallel to make 2 ohms, so it was cranking out 280 wpc and sounded like it.

After that experience, every other great system I've heard has had an incremental--not redefining--effect, though the VTL Siegfrieds driving Wilson Alexandrias a couple years ago came damn close.

Yes, my wakeup came in 77/78 with a pair of EPI's.I didn't even know at that time there was a Hi-End. I was a yankee transplant living in Nashville of all places.Went back to yankee country in'90 and within 6 months of the Stereophile review of the Apogee Stages, my world changed. I won't go into all the details,but honestly my whole view of life changed when they set them up at home and I could stand to listen Tanya Tucker at 101db's in the sit.When 80% of what you listen to over processed crap,you do what you gotta do.

Garrott Brothers rebuild of my Decca Gold cart in the 1980s - unbelievable in those days - vivid and it tracked without trashing your LPs.

Now, it has to be my Avantgarde Duos, which I bought five years ago - stunning and completely changed my system and what I hear.

Charlie

It's a toss up between my squeezebox and my alesis masterlink CD burner. The SB allows me to just listen to whatever I want, albeit not as good quality as my CD Rig (Esoteric X03SE) (There's a benchmark dac on the SB).

The Alesis was huge for me. It allows me to make excellent sounding compilations of my favorite CD's (and vinyl). I had originally intended to burn these CD's for the car but when I played one in my Esoteric, my jaw dropped.

I can also set my favorite FM jazz station and just record hours and hours of it while I am out. Once recorded, I just play and edit and make up CD's of music I like, but don't (YET) own.

Flexibiity, freedom and being able to play music from the radio at will is pretty cool for me.

Finally listening to OTLs (Atma-spheres). Very different than all the amps I have used before.

Tubed equipment;either a pre amp and/or a power amp!!!

My Maggie IIIs (tweaked xover). EVERY time I put something on, I'm stunned by the amazing sound.

Klipschorns, Maggies, Ohms, and Apogees are the speakers I've heard or owned that provided a redefining experience.

I owned a Tandberg tr2080 receiver for over 25 years that was my first taste of exquisite component design and what really good amplification can deliver.

The Linn Axis table I still own did the same in that area over 25 years ago.