Decisive moments your your audio journey

When I was 12 years old (1967) I heard Frank Zappa's Freak Out LP.  I can honestly say it had a profound effect and started me on a lifelong love affair with music.  Listening to Lee Morgan's Rumproller LP as I write this.  To quote the Dead, "what a long strange trip it's been".  

Yup, when I first heard DQ-10s decades ago.  

A lot of things along the way from my first TT as a kid but the most significant has been blind comparison of components.

When I got my first real turntable, a Technics belt drive... and I put a $250 MM cart on it. When I was 16. Listening to my metal albums (I was 16, what do you expect), hearing layers of information and nuance I had no idea were there. Also Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, etc.

This is the Ken half of Teo Audio. Taras, the other half of Teo, was into other music...certainly not metal, I'm sure. By the time I was 20 I gave up any metal tunes, anyway. But I'd been playing those albums very carefully and I've still got them.

In my early 20's I heard stacked original Quad electrostatics at an audio show. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I blame that experience for starting me on the often treacherous audiophile path.  Later WOW moments were hearing Maggies and MLs.