How did YOU get here?????

Here's a fun idea...

Let's all share how we stumbled across this site and share some of our history on this site...I am curious to see how we all stumbled across this and what our experience has been like...

For me, I began doing tons of research well over a year ago and was looking for some information regarding amplifiers and speakers, but I was really looking for pictures of other peoples setups to get some ideas of my own. I have learned a HUGE amount in the past 18 months on the whole realm of audio world and I am very thankful to this site for saving me thousands of dollars and hours. Also, because of this site I have become far more knowledgable and enjoy helping others that were in the place that I was once.

I was always into music as a teenager and spent all my allowance on buying CDs and an "awesome" Panasonic Mini-System... I was a die-hard Panasonic fan and when I fnally started working just over 4 years ago, I upgraded to Seperates (an all Technics (Panasonic) setup), I decided to do some research and maybe post an online review for my Technics gear.

So searching for consumer reviews brought me to this site, where I posted some great reviews for my gear. I then looked at the other reviews for products and manufacturers I had never heard of and almost died when I saw the price of a pair of B&W Nautilus (snailshell) speakers... And I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the world of high-end music and maybe Panasonic wasn't the king of audio equipment...

So I started frequenting the message boards, even though I was clearly at the bottom of the food chain.... Got a million suggested of dump the Technics gear and buy X product instead (none of which was available in my home country, nor could I afford to buy then if it had been)....

Anyway, eventually I fell off the board cuz frankly I got bored of the usual "Bose Sucks", "People who think Cables make a difference are insane", "Norh is awesome" (bet many of you haven't even heard of Norh lol)... and the endless of string of trolls who used to frequent this site.... and I just didn't have the time to be involved with the site as I had other priorities....

So anyway, I migrated to Canada and finally returned to this board after being absent for a few years, couldn't get my old username to work and had to create a new account... And I guess here I am....

Well I first came across this site when I was looking at purchasing some new towers, I was looking between Paradigm Studio 80's and the Jamo E875's. So i was browsing review after review. I was pretty new to the world of audio and sadly I didn't join the forum previous to buying speakers, I wish i would have looked at different models I haden't heard of. But the time came when my dad was looking at getting into a new set of speakers, and I was looking at upgrading my amp, so I came back to this site, and for some odd reason decided to check out the forum, and instantly I was impressed, and I have been hooked ever since.

I just love it here...

I was searching on equipment, and discovered that this site had a real nice system where everyone could plug in their ratings, and the results tallied. Kept coming back to check on how the latest gear rated, and they used to have this thing where the hottest threads were linked to at the front page. There were a couple music ones I was interested in, so I popped in and posted a few things. Someone started recognizing me from a couple of my posts, and I just kinda got sucked into a few conversations, and the next thing I know, it's 2007 and I'm a net.addict.

I was searching for new used equipment in early '98 and some retail site pointed me to the reviews here. I noticed thay had a forum and, after lurking for a few months, I got the cojones to actually post something.

a few years back I decided to upgrade my dolby prologic system... and I wanted to do it right, so I did much research both on the web and in many audio stores...
this website is one I found then and still use today ;o)

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Originally Posted by PeruvianSkies

Here's a fun idea...

Let's all share how we stumbled across this site and share some of our history on this site...I am curious to see how we all stumbled across this and what our experience has been like...

For me, I began doing tons of research well over a year ago and was looking for some information regarding amplifiers and speakers, but I was really looking for pictures of other peoples setups to get some ideas of my own. I have learned a HUGE amount in the past 18 months on the whole realm of audio world and I am very thankful to this site for saving me thousands of dollars and hours. Also, because of this site I have become far more knowledgable and enjoy helping others that were in the place that I was once.

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Back in 2002 I was looking around for some new components after living, (happily, I thought), with most of the same stuff since about 1980. (I bought a CD player in '84 which I upgrade in '91 -- that's it). So, looking for reviews, I came upon Audio Review and noticed there were forums. I've been here ever since.

I am always looking up interesting stuff I see,
most of this stuff is audio gear, like you walk past a hifi shop (or you've been to a hifi shop), and you see all those things, (this started with simple things, like cambridge audio, and denon, and other things like that, and continued to expand), and then you come home, and look up all those things you've seen,
when I say 'look up' I mean 'google it', and this site (mostly the review section) always filled the entire first page...
so you click on that, read it a little, and the first times I read it, I didn't find it that interesting, then more visits followed,

then I saw the 'forums' button...
I've been on quite a few forums before (I am not active anymore on most of them but anyways). I still read quite alot of other forums, but the thing that always annoyed me there was that when somebody posted a picture, as a link, like with the attachments (written correct?) I couldn't view them because you got those annoying 'click here to sign up or log in' errors, so that is one of the reasons why I signed up here, soon I found out that you guys were really funny guys, and were really supporting (well, as long as they didn't call us ignorant fuks, or elitest jerks and so :) )

And now I'm still here, (and will stay here), and I've already learned alot...

Keep them spinning,
Bert.

...either late '99 or early 2000 and I had been away from the hardware end of the hobby for a time. I was trying to find out what had happened to AUDIO magazine, formerly Audio Engineering, itself successor to RADIO est. 1917...or so the masthead said as I recall...

High Fidelity was kaput for quite some time, it's readership absorbed by Stereo Review which itself had become less "stereo" oriented in favor of the nascent HT market, eventually morphing into Sound & Vision I believe...

Anywho, I stumbled onto this place, then under Norb's stewardship, during a web search and began leafing through the forums when I came upon the "Cables and Interconnects" forum...Now you have to appreciate the fact that my last perusals of said mags had ads for the then cottage industry of aftermarket wiring...the hype handed me a laugh then as it still does to this day, but I digress...

After lurking and taking in what I still contend is more claptrap than anything else, I began to post, under my original moniker, as a staunch member of the "naysayers" camp...This did not sit well with certain parties and I engaged them much as I still do today, although the cast of characters has changed...In those days it was a feeding-frenzy, lead by a certain wire guru who had his followers, who did most of the dirty work.

My first friendly response from a like-minded individual "ignore the man behind the curtain" was message from markw, who was quite happy to have another individual on the team...and there was Eyespy, mtrycrafts, Pat D, FLZapped, Norm Strong, Woodman and a few others...

So here I am, despite numerous attempts within and without to have me quit the place and while I have frequented other websites, for some un-godly reason, I invariably call this place "home"...it must be the masochist in me.

jimHJJ(...either that or I'm as dumb as a bag of hammers...)

I was looking for reviews on Energy speakers. I joined the forums to ask a couple of questions and here I am. I'm still learning but thanks to you guys I have come a long way. I hang out at other sites (mostly lurking) but AR is home.

I was looking to make the switch from 2 channel to surround sound. I had my old Pioneer running 4 speakers around my pool table. It was so much easier to hear the TV this way. Often, people figgin' talk while playing pool. How dare they speak over B-5!
Oh well, so I was checking Google for reviews on receivers. After a few hits I stumbled onto this site as well as others. I found a thread from a few years back. Some regulars were bashing it out over what receiver was the best at the time. A knowledgeable man named Woodman made a great case for Yamaha. So picked one up and kept lurking. Then one day, there was a thread about someone having trouble with their Yamaha driving his ML's. (duh) Someone popped in about how all Yamaha's were crap. So I had to start writing. Ended up in a big fight with Flo, although I doubt he remembers. I was a newbie then. A few months later I heard a pair of Maggy's and the next thing you knew, I was asking Flo for advice on them. Been here ever sense.

I came here perhaps in late 1999 or the early 2000s. The reason why my join date and Resdident Losers join date does not go back to those times was some kind of upgrade to this site that took place about the time of the current join date listed that eradicated the original join dates. I had been dabbling in home electronics starting from the age of 4 or 5.
I saw that there were forums on this site and looked them over in the hope that I might be able to give advice to those that needed it from the knowledge that I had picked up over the years. It is true that many come and go, even I was off for awhile, but did return when the grey matter gave me the urge to come back. Sometimes you can get what I call "internet burnout". Besides audioreview, there was a wonderful forums site on a site called E-TOWN which one's questions were answered by some of the honchos in the industry. Each day, I would hit both sites. On this site I had a friendly spar with Terrible Terrence over Dynaquad. I remember with great effort trying to help Lexmark understand the EX channel when that came into existence. Since I cannot afford to upgrade, I really cannot give too much current info to help but I do read what others have to say so it keeps me informed.

I stumbled across this site in '99 or '00. Much like RL, I had a subscription to Stereo Review (which became Sound & Vision), but it had been almost 10 yrs since I bought any audio equipment other than a cd player from Circuit City. I became interested in 2 areas and started doing some web surfing for info. In the mid-90's, a law school classmate and I collected obscure videos from mail-order companies, mostly Euro-trash from the likes of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, etc. To save money, we each bought a hi-fi vcr, divided our video wish list and dubbed from ea. other's purchases. (We rarely ran into any copy-protection problems because our sources were copies converted from European originals.) After law school we went our separarte ways, but stayed in contact. My friend bought a dvd player and all I heard from him was how great dvd is. So, I needed to get a dvd player and I found this site while looking for reviews.

My second interest was to see how my stereo system stacked up against current standards. I quickly decided on new speakers after following discussions and recommendations by users like Vandy and others. After getting the new pair of speakers for my music-only system, I had to do something about the system for movies in the family room. I needed a pair of speakers that would function in an entertainment cabinet. That's when I learned about sealed enclosures from the good folks who used to be regulars here. I bought a pair of NHT SuperOnes for the cabinet and they perform almost as well in there as they do in free space. I added a sub at about the same time and haven't looked back. I was a regular for a while, took a hiatus, came back and went through the required registration, etc. which caused me to change the moniker I had been using. In addition to using the reviews and exchanging ideas and suggestions about equipment, I've enjoyed the favorite films board, the heated political exchanges on the off topic board and the info on new music at rave recs.

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Originally Posted by kelsci

I came here perhaps in late 1999 or the early 2000s. The reason why my join date and Resdident Losers join date does not go back to those times was some kind of upgrade to this site that took place about the time of the current join date listed that eradicated the original join dates.

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Same thing happened with me. My join date here is listed as Dec., 2001 but my actual join date is around Sept., 1998 when I posted my first product review here. I got bumped down to newbie status when the site was upgraded to its present incarnation. I don't recall exactly what audio related information I was searching the Internet for when I stumbled across Audio Review.

According to my Join date, I was around when the internet was first being develop at MIT and UCLA and lets not forget former VP Gore. But the military felt they needed it more than the general public until the late 80's. I started posting around 1999 and have seen this forum change at least 3 times over the years. I think one of my first product review was on my old Pioneer VSX 505s DPL and my old trusty optimus X77's

I was lurking in the back ground for a couple of years after doing some online research for some equipment and decided to join this past year when I finally upgraded to some high end equipment.

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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Originally Posted by topspeed

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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Too much information. Some things are better left unsaid.

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Originally Posted by topspeed

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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oh yes, oh, you sexy speaker you!,
oh yes, look at that preamp!!!!

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Originally Posted by topspeed

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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...they mistook aural for oral ...

jimHJJ(...it could happen...)

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Originally Posted by topspeed

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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yeah, some people might consider flo's speakers as porn... :ihih:



rock on,
Bert.

Oh lets not start talking about porn and Flo's speakers because I can get really raunchy with that subject.:ihih: :devil:

he may be selling his speakers, so time for new porn ... (see the svi selling jbl thread)

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Originally Posted by recoveryone

According to my Join date, I was around when the internet was first being develop ...

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Wow! How'd that happen?

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Originally Posted by topspeed

I was surfing porn and somehow got hotlinked here.

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Both are addictions, both cost money, and I suppose both could lead to divorce.