How did you contract "Audiophilia"

Tostadosunidos, Danoroo

High Fidelity, Inc., was on Lavaca St. in Austin, just south of what was then 19th St. and is now MLK Blvd.

I walked in there in 1966 as a 19-year-old impoverished college student and walked out with a Dynaco SCA-35 kit with strict instructions to bring it back when I'd finished building it to let them put it on the bench before powering it up.

When I did bring it back and they tested it I got the 1966 equivalent of high-fives all around, since it tested way above spec, so they found a way to let me have, at a great discount, an AR turntable and a pair of AR speakers that had been sitting on a shelf in the back room after another customer had backed out of a special order deal.

I spent many, many hours there, just hanging out, listening to equipment I couldn't afford and trying to help customers who came in when there wasn't an actual salesman available.

It was a great, great store with wonderful, generous people and it was an amazing introduction to how music could be reproduced so that you had some idea of what the performer intended.

I played with my record player as a young kid and got a few electrical shocks in the process and the rest is history.

Danoroo, you're thinking of Audio Concepts--it was in Dobie Mall at 21st and Guadalupe. As Sfar pointed out, HiFinc was on Lavaca, around the 1700 block I think. Later they opened another store on Anderson near MoPac and eventually closed the Lavaca store. Now both HiFi INC stores are long gone. As is Audio Concepts. But we've still got some brick and mortar stores with some fine equipment to offer.

I was a big music fan in high school in northern NJ and record listening sessions with friends were a weekly event. Eventually, that included a friend who had a high-end system. Five minutes into my first listening session with that system and I was stricken.

It only got worse as I began to explore local high-end shops. There was a dealer in Englewood (10 miles from my home) that had the original Wilson WAMM on display (with Crown amplification). One afternoon, I stopped in and they were kind enough to provide a listen (even tho I had no prayer of affording such a system at the time). It was probably the late '70s, but I remember the song:

"Under the Moon and Over The Sky" - by Angela Bofill.

Any chance of recovery died that day.

Martykl ...

Those listening sessions with friends in Jr. High School were great. It was the early 50's and we'd be all sitting around listening to a one-box hifi record player spinning Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck albums. Some Joe Houston, Earl Bostic and Big Jay McNeely too. As they say ... "them's were the days." And now ... we are still having record listening sessions with our friends. Some things never change.