Lemme see, hmmm...It was 1966, I was like 7 or 8 yrs old, living in Vietnam. Money was tight, my dad has a Philips tubed reel to reel, I still remember waiting for the power gauge to turn green before cranking it to Play. Not satisfied with it's 2x6 built-in mono speaker, my brother and I took it out of the player, crawled under our dad's wooden desk, emptied out the biggest compartment and spent days turning it into a speaker enclosure, we just wanted some bass badly from that little driver. And bass it did, real nice warm tubey sound! Next come treble, we wanted some treble. My brother got a hold of a microphone, he took the thing apart and lo and behold, there was a nice delicate dome membrane there with fine coil around its diameter. He put a signal to it and whoa...TREBLE! Fine fine treble but it needed a flared cone to bring the level up to par with the other driver. To really be in the sweet spot, we were both crouching under that desk listening... Other equipments came and went...A tubed mono amp that glowed so hot it split open a ceramic capacitor, Soundesign stereo/turntable AM/FM that we listened to Xmas and New Year Top 50 hits countdown from one of the US Army radio stations, we were just glued to it during this time. A Sony TC-366 reel-to-reel with the unique sloped front, sounds great but mechanically fragile, and those damn slipping belts...Ahh, next come Sony Cassette deck (still carry Scott brand). Huge Sansui then Fisher, Pioneer, Marantz receivers driving Pioneer speakers with elaborate wooden grills, remember those?. We spent ALL our money on stereo gears! Then came Advent speakers, wow what sounds, then those JBL with chocolate bar front grills, hey American speakers really kick ass we all felt. Bobbing on the boat to Thailand a year after the war, I think it was 1976, the only thing on my mine was IF I made it to America, am gonna git myself a huge stereo system AND JBL L100 speakers, the thought kept me warm and fuzzy thru the whole ordeal... Forward to 1980, Sansui AU-717 integrated and ESS Heil air motion speakers and Technics turntables, and those wild college parties I was a pest at the local hifi shop, bugging them EVERY wkends, borrowing equipments home. One of which was a pair of Bang&Olufsen bookshelf. Now, these sounded quite different from my kick ass ESS, warmer yet full of inner detail, smooth and I started to wonder about my choice and taste in speakers. During this time, I was saving every dollar for those TDK high bias tape, like $5 EACH And I was making 2.35 an hour! I spent hours tweaking the azimuth record head on the Sony cassette deck, not really satisfied with its playback quality In 1985, owning our home with a decent listening room, I got a pair of B&W DM110, 200W/c Nikko amp, a first on the block with a Sharp vertical loading CD player (which lasted 6 mos and the local Tower Records in Portland Oregon has 3 CD titles $24.99 each!) wow, no more hand washing LPs! In 1986, I made myself a passive volume pot from Radio Shack part and thought it sounded clearer than my preamp (an NAD) but the L/R level tracking was off. The hunt was on for some better pot out there continue even today for me I made my own IC out of either RG59/RG6 Belden solid core coax cables and goldplated connectors from Part Express, solder them wherever possible, Home Depot 12 gauge Monster cable for speakers. I spent no more than $100 total for wires and interconnects in last 30 years. I bought the cute looking Roku 1001 last Christmas and had a hard time liking the sound, which was both hissy and I doubt very much it was bit-perfect digitally, I had to return it. Then came the SB3, wow, now this thing is clean sounding and has a cool bouncy on screen menu. I am hooked! I have about 200 GB of WAV files and backup to external HD. I do not want to re rip these They are extracted from 500 CDs! I also have about 50 SACDs that I havent listened to much, the SB3 totally spoiled me and I felt that it is the best thing ever happened to an audio geek like me. My current setup: SB3>Musical Fidelity A3.24>Alps 50Kohms pot>2 Nakamichi PA7s>B&W 802 Nautilus>Nice!
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