How did you get into the hobby of HT?

[westcott]

I guess what I want to know is not how you got into this hobby but how do i get out!

eric

Thanks for the story Ericl. Short but fun.

As for how to get out of this hobby? My guess is in a pine box. Or do you prefer planers?

You will never get out, but if you get married, that just may slow you down a little! Have children and it might just kill you!!!!!

[Tarheel_]

"You will never get out, but if you get married, that just may slow you down a little! Have children and it might just kill you!!!!!"

Kids do not kill the hobby...they promote it...sure you may be watching Cinderella for the umph-teen time, but it's still nice to enjoy your hobby with the family....my 3 year old only knows 5.1 TV and movies.

[Worf101]

I grew up poor in the 40 Projects of New York City. They got their name from P.S. 40 which was one of the biggest buildings in the neighborhood. Needless to say, audiophilia took a back seat to staying employed getting fed etc. We had a variety of HiFi units including one of those godawful black/cream/pnk combo's that play 33's 45's and 78's. Wow. The only thing I knew about stereo is that we didn't have one. Fast forward through High School, College, the Army, College and finally I landed a job that paid me a wopping $14,000 a year... Wooo Hooo!!

I immediately went out to "Mon's stereo and bought some cheap JVC 3 ways (still being run by an ex-girlfriend to this day) that I mated to a used Pilot 300 Watt amp that I bought used from a pawn shop round the corner. I put these on milk crates and they did me fine for almost 15 years. I could never crank the thing anyways as I always lived in apartments. However as I earned more money and matured, I finally bought my own place. Around 2000 I got a house and decided to get a home theatre system... I came here, did a leetle research and put together my Frakenstein system... a mismatched affair that I bought on the cheap on the bay and other places. That's how I got started...

Da Worfster

[GMichael]

More and more great stories. Thanks to everyone for sharing.

Anyone else?

[L.J.]

Kids do not kill the hobby...they promote it...sure you may be watching Cinderella for the umph-teen time, but it's still nice to enjoy your hobby with the family....my 3 year old only knows 5.1 TV and movies.

I second that. Being a big kid myself surely helps. Plus some of the best soundtracks can be found on animation(Monsters Inc, Lion King, Incredibles & so on).

[shokhead]

Listening to the Beatles and Monkys on a Hover portable,trying to figure out if indeed that was really a bad word we heard{not},i knew i needed something better and it was on. About a year latter i upgraded to a am/fm 4ft tall standing radio from someones garage and went down to the high school and borrowed a loud speaker from the football field and put it on my roof. I have advanced sinse then.

[Kam]

great thread LJ, and awesome stories everyone!

i pretty much got my first taste of solid music at my best friend's house, where he was running a pair of mirage m3's with a parasound amp and preamp. he was big into audio and pretty much put the bug into me as well. he convinced his parents to spring for the mirage/parasound set up and we definitely took advantage of it more than they did. we'd put in peter gabriel's passion soundtrack and just dive into tracks 6-7 (that's still a disc i always take with me to audition things) or pop in aliens and fall in love with the director's cut. made me appreciate two-channel first and foremost, although those m3's could really create an enveloping soundfield. growing up we had a pretty simple stereo and record player, and i only remember listening to two records, one was a superman record where he was fighting against mtzlplckd (sp? the guy with no vowels in his name) and a batman record where batman went in to ape city to fight grod. i'd listen to those records a million times, till i had them memorized. flash forward to college and my first jobs and the process of building my own HT began! kept saving up and slowly building a ht piecemeal with some pieces taking longer to acquire than others! started out with two channels and denon, and thought i liked klipsch, but in less than a year, the klipschorn technology grew very tired to my ears, i switched to nht/marantz and never looked back! (although i've flirted with mirage again since then, i'm still in a healthy, committed relationship with nht.)

viva la casa teatro!

peace
k2

[L.J.]

Great stories everyone. There's alot of patient guys out there.


Anybody else gotta story?

Come on, don't be shy.

[Woochifer]

Great stories everyone. There's alot of patient guys out there.

One of the nicest parts of the home theater hobby is that it inherently rewards patience, and provides ample opportunity for incremental upgrades along the way. Just think of how many times people have come onto this board inquiring into HTIB systems. Almost all of the more experienced posters respond by preaching patience, because they either have first hand experience or have observed other newbies making similar decisions.

I think the biggest dilemma comes when people decide between a complete 5.1 speaker setup up front, or only buying the best pair of speakers available for the same budget. With a complete 5.1 setup from the outset, the complete surround functionality is there from the beginning. But, at the end of the day, expending more of the budget to fewer speakers at first and incrementally adding on will eventually result in a better performing system, provided that the buyer's willing to go with less than optimal virtual surround and nonmatching speaker setups in the interim.

And with upgrades, there are so many different options available that the hobby provides. In my case, with every additional speaker I added to my initial two-speaker setup, I got that much better sound quality from my system. And upgrades don't even have to involve buying new components. Just learning how to properly align the speakers, level match and time align the speakers, equalize the subwoofer, use the receiver's menu options, calibrate the video display, etc., can have its own set of rewards.

[Happy Camper]

I ran my TVs through my receiver for a long while but my first surround was an add on converter for center and rear channels. Wasn't what I was thinkin. I'm old enough to remember the big breakthrough in quad sound. A move brought new gear.

I finally put my latest audio side in place with B&K/Martin Logan/Velodyne 5.1 to enjoy the SACD/DVDA discs. In that setup I ran a Pioneer Elite rear projection, Pioneer Plasma, Panasonic Plasma. I now use a Sony OLED. I added the extra 2 channels for a 7.1 rig. I still get chills putting on a good rumbler like Jurassic Park or Saving Private Ryan and listen to the fun that is HT. The dogs, not so much.

At my age, the rig is in the basement collecting dust and I use a sound bar on the main TV.

[westcott]

"You will never get out, but if you get married, that just may slow you down a little! Have children and it might just kill you!!!!!"

Kids do not kill the hobby...they promote it...sure you may be watching Cinderella for the umph-teen time, but it's still nice to enjoy your hobby with the family....my 3 year old only knows 5.1 TV and movies.

Hey Tarhell,

If you knew me, you would no I was just making an attempt at humor.


I love children, as long as they belong to someone else!