So what's your funniest audiophile story? [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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manlystanley
08-09-2010, 11:37 AM
My funnest story was that there was a guy who got all kinds of advice of what kind of equipment to buy. After he received it all, and all the boxes where sitting in his basement he went back to the forum and asked:

" So what now? How do I put all this stuff together??"

Sometimes the chase is more fun then the actual reward.

I personally am glad that I started out cheap (craigslist cheapo's). It's given me a chance to: learn and determine what my tastes are.

Best Regards,
Stan

JoeE SP9
08-09-2010, 12:04 PM
How about my neighbor who came over leaned on one of my speakers and asked, "Where is the sound coming from?". It was playing music at the time.

bobsticks
08-09-2010, 01:15 PM
I don't know if it's funny or pathetic but a couple of months ago I was chillin' at the audio boutique and a shiny, new, baby blue Porsche cab skreetches to a stop in the parking lot. A Tom Selleck mustachio'd man extricated himself from the vehicle and entered the store.

He was an anesthesiologist. I know this because he announced it to everyone but I might have guessed it as his scrubs were the same lovely and delicate shade of baby blue. It was really adorable. I was going to ask him if he had a race car bed and matching peejays with the footies but thought the better of it.

He'd brought his own music through which we suffered for a brief period after which he arranged for delivery of a set of Anniversary Issue Martin Logan CLX's, a Martin Logan Descent sub, two of the big 2K Mac monoblocks, the C1000 tube preamp and C1000 controller, a McIntosh MVP871 and several thousands of dollars worth of cables.

His "test discs" were an old Stones disc and, I swear to God, "Inagaddadavida" so severely compressed to MP3 that they made $80,000 worth of equipment sound like an Orb Audio sphere stuffed in a steeltoed workboot.

markw
08-09-2010, 04:49 PM
Back in the late 70s, I was pushing a pair of JBL L-55 Lancers (the ones with glass tops) with my trusty ole Marantz 2270.

My best buddy walks in with his new "puppy" in tow. Now, puppy was about two feet tall, and took an immediate interest in my speakers.

He walked over, sniffed at them briefly, and promptly offered his considered opinion by raising his rear leg, and proceeded to christen the speaker grilles with yellow water.

I screamed so loud he almost knocked himself out running into the closed door trying to get away.

Well, everyone else thought it was funny anyway...

These are the same speakers that my first wife placed plants on and over-watered them. ...at least three times, warping them beyond belief.

jrhymeammo
08-09-2010, 05:34 PM
When I used to live in Denver, one of my favorite HiFi shop just received a pair of Stradivari Homage. They were breaking them in with $30K+ worth of Classe gear at mind boggling SPL of Britney Spears....

That and I used to buy everything at retail price.

blackraven
08-09-2010, 10:12 PM
A good freind of mine brought home a REL Britania sub to audition. So he puts some music on and goes up stairs and tells his wife, just listen to tha fantastic bass. He comes back down stairs and I say to him that the sub was never on!

PeruvianSkies
08-09-2010, 10:21 PM
Years ago when SACD was first being introduced there was a HiFi shop that my friend and I were taking trips to on regular occasions to check out the latest in the world of audio and of course to listen to some SACD's, among other things.

One day we were in the "reference" room and another customer was in there playing several recent SACD's that he bought. He was acting really animated and was to the point of REALLY ANNOYING within a few seconds of being in the same room as him as he kept pointing out how amazing his SACD's sounded and how they would replace CD's and how he was going to go out and buy every-single-SACD-released and blah blah blah, when he left the store my friend and I checked the equipment out and found that the entire time he was playing material that it was only reading the CD layer and while it did sound good, the guy was basically trying to over-hype something even though he wasn't really hearing what he thought that he was to begin with.

PeruvianSkies
08-09-2010, 10:27 PM
A buddy of mine that I used to work with was in an eBay craze when we worked together and kept coming into work telling me about all these great deals he was getting on eBay and how I should check into it. I would get regular updates from time to time about some deals that he got and he was starting to replace some of his HT gear with better stuff and often times I could get some of his older stuff and we would trade. One day he was going on and on about a recent mono amplifier that he got a "steal" on with eBay and how he was super pumped about getting it and that he would replace his 5-channel HT amp once he got around to replacing them with monoblocks. Well, that mono amp came in the mail a few days later and turned out to be a stereo amp with 1 channel blown, thus making it a mono amp....I about died in laughter when I found out he was duped like that.

emaidel
08-10-2010, 03:24 AM
When I bought my B&W 802F Specials in 1984, a friend of mine came over to listen to them, but first asked,"Why are there duck decoys sitting on top of your speakers?" He, of course, was referring to the tweeter/midrange assemblies.

markw
08-10-2010, 04:22 AM
When I bought my B&W 802F Specials in 1984, a friend of mine came over to listen to them, but first asked,"Why are there duck decoys sitting on top of your speakers?" He, of course, was referring to the tweeter/midrange assemblies.Well, I've heard midranges called squawkers, but he must have been quackers.

GMichael
08-10-2010, 05:22 AM
There is a guy I work with who has asked me for advice over the years. What receiver, which speakers, HD-DVD or BR etc. I have even come here and posted some of his questions to be able to give him the best advice I could. Now, it’s years later, he still hasn’t set it up yet. The receiver is pre-HDMI.

manlystanley
08-10-2010, 05:32 AM
When I had my Maggies, I had so many people who came into my music room and asked where the speakers were. They were shocked that a speaker could be so thin....

Worf101
08-10-2010, 06:48 AM
I don't have anything as outrageous as those, all I know is that one day after she was finally ensconced in my HT room and listening to some music she turned to me and said:

"I don't know why but I must tell you that this music sounds marvelous".

I almost fell out. Puddin' is as big a Luddite as there is. She can barely operate her MP3 player BUT she knows that my stereo sounds better than ear buds. She also recently admitted that the 52-inch Sammy was NOT an extravagance as she first thought. Will miracles never cease?

Worf

Hyfi
08-10-2010, 06:49 AM
Maybe not too funny since it involved me but....

Years ago when I moved into my current home, I upgraded my system from Hafler/Mirage gear to Sound Valves-Stratos-Danes. It was mid 90s near the end of the giant Sony Rack system craze where you had all the cheesy plastic component in a rack and then however tall it ended up, there was a set of 1/4 inch thick fiberboard speakers that sounded like old factory auto 3x5s.

So with that in mind, I had noticed all of a sudden an older neighbor who has a glassed enclosed little porch off the back of their house had this real big set of speakers with the backs facing my house. I immediately said to my wife, "wow the so and so's just got a new Sony Rack system" and we chuckled about it.

That 4th of july, our first in the neighborhood, they invited us to a BBQ for all the neighbors and we went over. He had music, bad at that, blasting from the back porch. After several beers, I needed to relieve myself so I went into the porch to get to the little boys room. There was no gear on the porch that I could see but the Sony Rack speakers, or so I thought, turned out to be a gorgeous pair of High End Speakers. As I entered the house from the porch, I noticed the "Rack". Nope, not at all what I thought and again all High End Gear. (I'll get to what it was in a moment)

So we got to talking and I had him come over to hear my setup and we spent many a night drinking beers and listening to his on that porch, which by the way being all glassed in sucked the bass completely out of everything he played. Our music tastes differed greatly but we did agree on how a good recording sounded great no matter who it was.

Now we all know with nice gear and good recordings, the louder you make it the better it sounds so he learned to crank it a bit all the time. Being in their 60s, the wife with no musical taste whatsoever complained endlessly about it. We stopped getting together and fell out of contact after a while and did not have anymore listening sessions.

One day I saw that the big speakers were gone and there were small Bose speakers on little stands. I finally found out why when he approached me out of the blue asking me what all the other gear was worth and that he would give me something if I could sell it all for him. It was just after the big market crash a few years ago and after emailing all the MFGs to find out what the stuff listed for when new, I started to advertise for sale for pretty reasonable prices. I offered him $300 for the cable but he said no, he wanted to sell it all together. It turned out that the amp was not properly working and the pre needed tubes so that made it all harder to sell plus the weight of the amp hindered shipping. So I again made a ridiculous offer and he said no, his son in law was going to sell it for him. I said if he changed his mind, let me know and it was over.

The first day it snowed I got a phone call. "I need to get my snow blower out and all this gear is in my way, do you still want it?" I reluctantly said OK, I'll play around and see if I can get it to work. I hung up the phone and started Snoopy Dancing around the house. He pulled up with his riding mower with all the gear in tow and we unloaded it into my garage. I wrote him a check for $300, not just for the cables but for everything. He kept his California Audio Labs CD player.

So after $200 to repair the amp and another $100 to re-tube the pre, I now had his system in my listening room and it's still my current setup of VAC pre, Counterpoint amp, Synergistic Research ICs and Speaker wire ($2k worth of cables alone) and the big speakers I first saw, Clearfield Continentals designed and built by Albert Von Schweikert when he worked for Counterpoint.

I'm not sure what's funnier, what I thought was a Sony Rack System or the fact that I procured $15K worth of gear for $300 plus $300 to fix it up.

bobsticks
08-10-2010, 12:59 PM
Will miracles never cease?

Worf

That's awesome Worf. My girlfriend's 8 year old came back from a sleepover the other morning with a DVD copy of Igor that she'd bagged from her friend. She said it didn't look or sound right on their TV. I felt the same way...

PeruvianSkies
08-10-2010, 07:33 PM
"I thought audio "files" were people who only listened to music on their computer or iPods."

blackraven
08-10-2010, 07:45 PM
Here's a recent Bose story that happened at my house. My 19yo son had a friend over and my son was showing him my system. The kid did not seem that impressed. He said that his family is building a new house and was bragging that they were installing a Bose HT system and that it was the best that you could buy. My son had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing and breaking the kids bubble.

bobsticks
08-10-2010, 09:39 PM
I'm not sure what's funnier, what I thought was a Sony Rack System or the fact that I procured $15K worth of gear for $300 plus $300 to fix it up.

I'm not sure either but I need some of the latter kind of "funny" in my life fo sho...

kelsci
08-11-2010, 02:39 PM
Back in the 1970s, I was living in an effeciancy apt. One day, I chased after a palmetto bug who disappeared behind my audio equipment. Many months later I performed some maintenance on my X-100A Fisher tube amp. Laying dead next to a 6bq5 output tube in that amp was that palmetto bug.