Name a single person that influenced your audio journey the most.

He rambles a lot of nonsense at times (really, I'm not the one to judge) but all his opinnions are his own, and I personally find him and his monologue head strapon camera ways interesting. Also, he does introduce quite a bit of good budget gear too.
I agree with his point that the headphone absolutley needs to be comfy first, or forget it. Then if it is, we can talk about sound.

 

The late J. Gordon Holt, and Peter J. Walker. Started subscribing to Stereophile before I was old enough to shave. Nearly bought LS3/5a's on his recommendation, then heard the Original Quad electrostatics when I was in college. Been warped ever since.

 

My mom.

Ever the fan of classical music, she randomly leave new pieces of music in the house (the first one was Karajan's 9th symphony cassette tape set) and then after gotten me hooked she bought a integrated turntable/amp and speakers for me (yes, that was many decades ago).

she is always the audiophile in the house with huge and good sounding system. at one point she is famous among the audiophile and hifi store circle in her city as dealers keep mentioning this woman with a huge bag of CD going to one store after another auditioning systems. she is not the technical type but she will let you know if the system sounds bad.

she encouraged me to build a system and it just developed from there...

 

I'd say it would have to be my late grandfather. He was a fantastic guitarist/vocalist and had started a band in his younger years. So he had nice (but modest) stereo equipment/speakers/turntables/etc. all around the house and in his workshop out on the farm. He even owned a vintage Les Paul standard (among many other guitars and amps) that we unfortunately had to sell after his passing because times were tough and people were making offers that we just couldn't refuse. Needless to say as a child I always loved looking at all the knobs, lights, and switches all over the tuners, pre-amps, you name it.

My grandfather (and by extension my mother) imprinted on me the fact that music isn't absolute. It is what you make of it and it is something to be enjoyed. This is probably the driving factor behind why I don't take a whole lot of stake in measurements and the "science" behind audio. But instead just feel out gear with my ears and emotions. It's non-nonsensical, I know, but every time I really get lost in the music I always just find myself thinking about my grandfather and how he enjoyed it simply because it existed, and he could play it, not because of how it sounded. Even though he definitely did appreciate good sound when he heard it!

 

Tony Andrews from Turbosound, and Paddy Handcombe from Electrofluidics

 

I know you the post says public figure but I have to say it's always been my dad.

There are photos of me as a baby with over the ear headphones on as my dad knew that was the best way to calm me down was with music. A photo of my dad working with his hi-fi setup of a record player, 2 cassette players (1 Nakamichi another Akai) and Sansui receiver and speakers. This was all during my infancy. He has been an audiophile before I knew the word existed. He would get the nicest equipment money could afford. One setup he kept in his bedroom and the other in the living room. We never had the nicest car but I know that no one else I knew had a setup remotely close to what my dad had. Not to mention by the end of the LP era, he had 500+ LPs in his collection ( all Bollywood though, and 4 Boney M because I loved them so much).

And as I got older, started school, then high school, his passion never waned. I really appreciated listening to music through his setup and eventually started to get hand me downs from him for my own bedroom.

I still remember I introduced him to his first CD though. After LPs and moving to Pakistan he was mostly focused on cassettes. He still had his 500 +LPs but he was not buying any nowm of them. After 1990 he started collecting CDs (and that collection I still have to this day). He gave those all to me.

He is the reason why I'm a music lover first and an audiophile. I'll edit this post when I'm at my desktop.

 

Corey Greenberg (Stereophile) in the mid 90s got me into headphones with the Grado SR60. He also got me into home speakers with NHT Superzeros.

I had a Radio Shack CD 3400 in my backpack and SR60s on my head as I walked to school at OSU. I got a lot of looks.

 

Dare I even say this?

NwAvGuy helped me to begin to understand the amount of bullshit there is in hifi and the extent to which magical realism rules, especially when it comes to price tags. Ethan Winer helped along the way.

"JJ" Johnston got me interested in digital myths and realities, although even he was not able to help me through my mathematical mental blocks to real understanding. But he helped me to realise that much of what I thought I knew isn't actually like that. He helped me to know how little I know, how immense the subject of digital sound is, and, whether one likes the result or not, what an act of mental genius the creation of lossy formats such as MP3 actually is. Oh, and that digital sound is mathematical, not magical. Except in the metaphorical sense.

 

The person who originally got me into audio was Snazzy Labs, back in the early 2010s when he was "That Snazzy IPhone Guy". I was in middle/early high school and it introduced me into the world of audio through things such as vmoda, beats, and the ipod classic. I then continued my audio journey from a mainstream perspective but around 2016/2017 I found DMS when trying to find new IEMS. He introduced me to the world of the HD6XX.

I think the person who influenced me the most moving forward was Steve Guttenburg the Audiophiliac. While I don't agree with most of what he believes, and don't agree with much of stereophile, I love his passion for this hobby. It really is contagious how much he loves it, and that love has influenced me to be true to my love for this hobby.

 

Why, @CEE TEE of course.

The first meet I went to was organized by him. His perspective on the hobby and on life in general helped guide me to where I am today.

 

@Bill-P was that the meet where we met the first time? How long ago was that?

 

@schiit was my gateway into the hobby.

Years ago, I was browsing one of those technology blogs like Engadget or something. I saw a review for a Schiit headphone amp and up until that point, I had no idea that there was such a thing as a headphone amp, or even high-end headphones. I had a family friend with a kick-ass speaker system with a tube amp so I knew that there were high-end audio components but I didn't know about headphone hifi. After that I found Tyll, then Headfi and then this place.

But ya, Schiit was the spark. I've had lots of gear from other companies but I've always had at least one Schiit item in my chain. Currently its a Loki but I have a Bifrost 2 inbound.

 

My friend Mark who is RIP many years ago.

Couldn't be more different. He was speakers only and hated headphones with a passion. He smoked crappy Dunhills, I prefer my cigars and pipes. He had a fetish of female vocals, I prefer electronic and musical only with no vocals stuff. He didn't take care of himself, I kind of do. He was a boomer, I was not.

But he taught me some very serious things:

• If something sucks, call it out. Don't contempt with something that you actually hate because it makes you join the cool club.
• Really focus on how crappy sources/albums and different audio components can be. Admit that the album is good on a musical level but sucks on an audio quality level.
• Audiophiles can be overrated more often than you think.
• Have fun and be the cool guy, not an old boomer who is in his own world.

I also remember he had a walk in closet of $5,000 worth of interconnects. He was a major cable believer, I only heard a major difference once in my life at his place. Crazy guy, but sadly he started to develop stroke symptoms and he passed before I can see him again dropping $30k on his setup. The local audiophiles later went to his house and auction off everything. At least I know who owns his old 90s heavily modded VPI TT. I wonder what happened to his cat.

 

My best friend in high school. He introduced me to what a decently thought through system could sound like. It changed my perspective. Eventually a group of us formed and we used to talk endlessly about the pros and cons of tape vs records, vibration isolation, speaker cable, etc.

Pretty much the same as I do now except digital sources.

He unfortunately died a few years later. I sometimes wonder if he were still alive whether we’d still be talking about audio. I like to think so.

 

He must have been a good friend. You still care about his cat, that means something.

 

I lived next to to a recording engineer when I was a kid. He also built custom studio consoles that are still in use in a few studios in Burbank, North Hollywood and Sun Valley. He worked on albums for Blondie, Talking Heads and a few others. He had these artists come by his home studio to go over tracks they were working on. I met Debbie Harry and the members of Blondie, David Byrne, Weird Al Yankovic. He was always giving me albums for free. He taught me how to solder components onto boards and would pay me $15 for each board I packed....they are probably still in use somewhere.

Around the same time my buddy lived at the Top of Victory in the west San Fernando Valley a couple miles from my house. His next door neighbor was Dr Demento and he used to invite us in to listen to music.

Then there was the older neighborhood kids that thought it would be funny to get me stoned at 9 while playing Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy. Needless to say, I begged my parents to buy me the album. Still have it.

 

Yeah, that's the one. I think it was... 2010? It was certainly quite a while ago.

 

Jude Mansilla nuff said.