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!
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!