OK, I'm bored.

Mine was in 1977 In Banff Alberta in front of a pair of Klipsh speakers that were worth around 5-7 grand at the time. The album was Dark Side of the Moon, a direct pressing from the original master.

The track was the one with the female vocals rumoured to be Linda Ronstadt.

It was truely an amazing moment for me. Up to that point, I had no idea that recorded music could sound so real.

Also from the 70's:

My parents had a decent HiFi but nothing grand. One night we went over to a friend of my parents who was blind. He had this amazing looking rack of gear (all SAE I think) and some speakers I do not remember but there were taller than I was. Then the real treat; our friend sat me down in his special chair and nimbly fired this thing up. The Moody Blues, Seventh Sojourn. I heard it before and knew it well, but listening to Lost In A Lost World that night made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Well I'm a couple of decades earlier, 1958. It was Elvis's Golden Hits, playing on a Sears bought Seabreeze record player.

It doesn't compare to todays equipment but it was enough to get a 12 year old hooked for life.

Keep in mind my definition of Audiophile is "something one uses to sharpen the needle on a record player"

Funny you should mention a seabreeze. A year before I got my first stereo, may aunt gave me CSNY Dejavu and my grama give me a seabreeze record player. Neil Young singing Helpless inspired me to pick up a guitar and learn how to play and sing.

I'd like to say my first audiophile moment was about gear but that was only partly right. My first real equipment that connected me with the music was this piece, Sony's first transistor radio from 1960. It let me listen endlessly to AM radio. Presley, Orbison and Duane Eddy all day long.

Jakeman,

Do you have Orbison's "Black and White Night" on HD-DVD? It is a fantastic recording.

Thanks for that tip, SRoode. I'm still looking for good concert HD DVDs for my defunct XA2 and I've always been an Orbison fan. I'm going to order it tomorrow.

When my parents purchsed a Magnavox stereo home entertaiment console, the world had been mono to that point.

I wouldn't call it an audiophile moment, more of a musical awakening. You could say that my exposure to music was rather sheltered; my parents only listened to classical music. While I can appreciate that now as an adult, I wanted to hear new things -- like what my friends at school were listening to. When I was in 4th or 5th grade, I was given a little 9V battery powered AM/FM radio. I would listen to it at night by balancing it on my ear as I lay on my pillow. It wasn't even stereo, but I loved it.

I "hacked" (as they'd call it these days) the radio for better reception, by removing the antenna from the body, mounting it at the top of my wall with a couple push pins, and running a wire from it down to my bed (I slept on a top bunk) where I connected it back to the radio.

The radio stations I'd listen to most were out of LA. One was Pirate Radio, which played the likes of Guns 'n Roses, Def Leppard, Metallica, and other big names in the harder side of rock. The other station was 97.1 KLSX, where Jim Laad opened up my ears to Classic Rock. (Incidentally, Tom Petty wrote a tribute to him called "The Last DJ".)

Mom handed over her box of 45s when we were old enough to play them (and learned the hard way about vinyl handling)... so I grew up on a steady diet of Jan & Dean, Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, the Piltdown Men, the Ventures (those were dad's), Lesley Gore, Del Shannon, and all that stuff...

My brother and I had an ever-evolving turntable setup as our uncle would upgrade his stuff and give us his old stuff... then I started getting into speaker building... and then got right back out.

Bren R.

It was a bit strange to read this sentence after having just read the thread on semi-automatic pistols....

My first moment was in high school circa 1985 or 1986 when I got some Cerwin Vegas, a Pioneer receiver, and a Fisher CD player. I'd had boomboxes and consoles until then, and the step up was dramatic. My CDs came alive. I remember the drums on Rush's Power Windows (an early "DDD" recording, back when I looked for that kind of info), how they sounded so real and full in the intros for "Marathon" and "Mystic Rhythms".

Nah, I'm 34 and she still tells me once a week I'm going to shoot my eye out.

This past hunting season, getting a burr in the eye was close enough for her to nag me some more.

Bren R.