What are your Eureka Moments in this Hobby?

Some Aha! moments when I finally heard what the big name reviewers were talking about. Many years ago I remember walking into David Beatty Stereo in Kansas City , and they were playing a trumpet concerto through Magnapan Tympani speakers. Each speaker was a triple panel affair, and for the first time ever I could have sworn that trumpet player was right in the room with me. Another time in a store in downtown Seattle, I strolled into the audio store and they had their largest room set up with B&W 801’s, and as luck would have it, it was a slow day in the store and the sales guy fired it up, handed me the remote, and said, “Enjoy!”, walked out and shut the doors. I’ve never heard reproduced music with such presence, and so natural. I just couldn’t stop. I sat there for two hours playing track after track. Unfortunately, I do not know what the electronics were, but whatever they were there was an incredible synergy that I’d not heard before. Here’s how good that afternoon was: my wife was with me, and she sat there the whole time and never asked if we could leave. I don’t know if she heard what I heard, but without me having to say a word, she knew I was having “a moment”. There’s one or two more, but for me the significance of those experiences is that those events were good enough to make me continue to chase high end sound for 40+ years. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to afford the equipment that I’d like to have, but I have landed on a system that I’m very happy with, and it currently includes Martin Logan speakers. 

@hilde45 No problem with explaining my perspective.  You state that when you listen - both musically and critically (to the equipment) - they are both ultimately related to getting the most out of the music.  There is no separation, just a shift in relative focus, and the balance between the two varies and is transient.  That is your personal reality.  You also identify three endpoints of "involvement types", which include the person in it just for the music, just for sound reproduction, and just for their appreciation of the equipment (I prefer envisioning that endpoint as a curator of audio history rather than a status seeker, but it could be either/both). In any case, at the extreme, two out of three of those endpoints do not have that dynamic balance between musical listening and technical listening - in fact one has neither.  You could plot all positions on a triangular graph with the three axes being endpoints.  That is the "general" characterization, and there are positions on that graph that don't necessarily involve musical appreciation.  

This conversation is going way too far into the theoretical! I enjoy the theoretical, but let's get back to listening to our systems (and hopefully appreciating the music!).  Best, Peter

In regard to music, I had one epiphany that was a life changer:

Like a good percentage the other young musicians I knew in the mid-60’s, it was bands like The Kinks, The Yardbirds (with first Eric Clapton and then Jeff Beck on guitar. Up until their final album---Little Games, which I did not at all care for. Their third guitarist sucked ), The Who, The Animals, and Them (featuring of course Van Morrison) that I was into, along with Buffalo Springfield and The Lovin’ Spoonful (not---perhaps surprisingly, given their popularity, The Beatles or The Stones). That was followed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers (first three albums, with first Clapton, then Peter Green, and then Mick Taylor), Moby Grape, Procol Harum, The Jeff Beck Group, then eclipsing all others Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience (I saw both live twice in 1967 and ’68. Envious? )

Then on July 1st of 1968 an album was released that I found impenetrable: Music From Big Pink by some band called The Band. I did not even understand what it was supposed to be. The best musicians I knew---and the smartest non-musicians I knew---claimed to love it. I tried, and tried, and tried, but to no avail. I also read everything written about it, and still didn’t get it; it remained a complete mystery to me.

In the Spring of 1969 my teen combo was offered a gig opening for The New Buffalo Springfield at a local San Jose-area High School. We of course excepted, and were informed that it was conditional on my drumset being available for Dewey Martin (the sole remaining original member) to perform on (he traveled with only a Rogers snare drum, bass drum pedal, and stick bag), and three amplifiers. No problem, even though Dewey is right handed and I’m a southpaw (my Ludwig kit had two mounted toms, so re-arranging it for right handed play was no big deal). Our guitarist, bassist, and organist had pro-level amps (a Fender blackface Dual Showman, an Ampeg with a 15" JBL D-150 driver, and whatever amp the Hammond organ was playing through).

The night arrived, and we played our opening set to a large crowd of kids sitting on the gymnasium floor (terrible acoustics!). The Springfield had arrived, and I was surprised to see Randy Fuller (Bobby’s brother) amongst the four members. I remember feeling like a little kid; The Springfield members looked very "adult". Dewey re-arranged the kit, the other three plugged in, and their set started. As I listened, I became somewhat bewildered. None of the four members seemed to be doing much, but they sounded SO good. A rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist (playing a Gibson ES-335), Randy playing his Fender Precision bass, and all four member singing. Oh my God, they sounded fantastic!

As I sat there listening, trying to figure out why that was, some of what I had read about the Music From Big Pink album came flooding into my brain. The answer was the concept of ensemble playing. That might sound like a small statement, but it’s not; It changes EVERYTHING. In the span of The Springfield’s set my entire musical language had been re-evaluated, and drastically re-engineered. As Springsteen said upon hearing Music From Big Pink for the first time, "Suddenly, everything had changed" (or words to that effect). Clapton put it thusly: "Music had been headed in the wrong direction for a long time, and when I heard MFBP I thought ’Somebody has finally got it right’"

It took a while, but I too finally got the message, and things were never the same.

SACD

@peter_s 

We can end it here! For the record, I'm not claiming that everyone should experience things the way I do. I'm making a narrower point — "music" and "sound" aren't two different objects one can choose to listen to. They're different ways of describing the same phenomenon. No one can attend to musical structure without also attending to acoustic properties (timbre, dynamics, spatial presentation), because those properties constitute the musical relationships. The question is "how much attention" and "what kind of attention." Listeners genuinely differ in what they value and how they talk about their experience, but the same reality is there to be perceived. 

(N.B. I cannot abide a phrase like "personal reality" — that phrase  suggests we each inhabit separate realities – too solipsistic. Unless one of us is genuinely insane or from another planet, we share the same reality. That's what makes this conversation possible in the first place.)

But you're absolutely right that we've gone deep into the theoretical, and there's a point where further discussion becomes unproductive. I appreciate the exchange — it's helped me clarify my own thinking. Time to get back to the music (and the sound!).