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.
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.