Name a single person that influenced your audio journey the most.

Discussion in 'General Audio Discussion' started by Ardacer, Nov 7, 2018.

  1. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    MacedonianHero from HF. With him I learned not to believe all the crap you read and never trust anyone but yourself when buying gear, valuable lesson.
    His LCD-3 review was best ever omfg, LCD-X best ever everything else is crap, LCD-4 is a godsend can't do better, LCD-4Z is amazballs you're stupid for not having it etc. etc. etc.
     
    Last edited: Nov 8, 2018
  2. Velomane

    Velomane Acquaintance

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    @m17xr2b

    Funny. I was reading his reviews last week and I came to the same conclusions as you. Certain adjectives come up in every review.
     
  3. DigMe

    DigMe Friend

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  4. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

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    In all seriousness for me it might be Tyll for headphones and Toole for speakers.

    P.S. All you patrick82 fans - you can still find the guy on youtube. Even all of his ultracringe early stuff is there.
     
  5. Tachikoma

    Tachikoma Almost "Made"

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    Oh my god, Patrick82.

    I think it was Jahn who got me started on Stax.
     
  6. fishski13

    fishski13 Friend

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    Listener Magazine - Art Dudley
     
  7. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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  8. westermac

    westermac Friend

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    Not technically one person, but it would be my recording tech professors back in school (Jeff Cline and Jon Frazier). Between those two guys and the countless hours I spent with them, I learned how to solder cables and do basic repairs, memorize and identify frequencies, effectively apply EQ, select and place mics, coach musicians, tune drums, etc, etc. But of all the schtuff I learned, the single most valuable thing they taught me (and the single reason I make my student loan payment each month without bitterness) is how to use my ears to LISTEN critically. You can certainly learn that yourself (free of charge) but I came away from their tutelage having learned how to actually use one of my 5 senses. It changed the way I experience the world.
     
  9. sorrodje

    sorrodje Carla Bruni's other lover - Friend

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    DavidMahler on Head-fi.

    The guy who wrote this : https://www.head-fi.org/threads/battle-of-the-flagships-58-headphones-compared.634201/

    I began my audio journey when he wrote that gigantic thread and I did climb the ladder accordingly to his rankings. I don't always agree with his statements but nevertheless, each time i read his thread (which was devastated when HF came to the current board) I remember how much I raved about the headphones he reviewed, promising myself to try almost all headphones and make my own opinion.

    My quest arrived to his end when I finally heard the Orpheus @3X0 's place 2 years ago. I never had the chance to hear a Sony R10 nor the original Stax SR-Omega but overall I owned/tried almost every other headphones of his list plus a bunch of others which were released after David's review.

    It's not to say David's opinion is still a reference but for sure, it's the guy who influenced the most my audio journey.
     
  10. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

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    There's that amazing thing, and then there's that guy that reviewed every single iem in existence too
     
  11. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    Alan Blumlein - his work and legacy, and the effect that it had on engineers and researchers that I've been lucky enough to work with. The ripples that he made have indirectly given us a lot of what we have today.

    (Honourable mentions for Claude Shannon, too.)
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2018
  12. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Is he still around? I would have thought that he graduated to speakers by now. That money in headphones can be a down payment on a bigger house where he lives (oh wait, not anymore, real estate has gone crazy there).
     
  13. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    Probably Bob Cordell. As an engineering student in 2001 I got a copy of Doug Self's first book which got me into DIY and amp design. But Self's books have always conflated his dogmatic religious objectivist agenda with teaching you about amplifiers.

    Fast forward a decade and I picked up Cordell's book and it remains probably one of my favorite reference reads of all time.
     
  14. Mithrandir41

    Mithrandir41 Friend

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    Yep. I believe he writes for headphone.guru.
     
  15. sphinxvc

    sphinxvc Gear Master (retired)

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    The financially reckless asshole inside me that wouldn't stop trying different shit, and thanks to whom, I eventually figured out what I like/what 'philosophy' (as Marv likes to put it) I wanted to employ. Thanks, asshole.

    No, but on a more serious note, Pass, people here, too many to name.
     
  16. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    Probably J. Gordon Holt in the 1970’s. Got me into a Marantz receiver, Technics turntable and ESS speakers. That’s when the whole addiction to good sound began.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2018
  17. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    Don't know.

    Maybe myself. Not in a self-important kind of way but because ultimately we are our own set of ears. Not just audio, but almost all hobbies I've seen (even if the measurements or conventional wisdom may say otherwise).

    If it isn't myself, then it would either be
    1) Tyll at Innerfidelty. Shame (for me) that I got back into audio right before his retirement. I suspect I have different hearing + preferences from him, but somehow his "general trends and patterns" most closely match my own from all of the audio websites + publications I've seen so far.
    2) Hopefully I don't get buried for this, but Jude actually. All negatives aside, his creation of HF did ultimately enable me 6-7 years ago to jump start a lot of my own curiosity about audio. And although I took a haitus for 5 years, if I really argue the point, his behavior during that time did (inadvertently) eventually lead to many of the forums we now have today.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2018
  18. Pogo

    Pogo Friend

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    Julian Hirsch in the late 60's/early 70's and Frank Van Alstine in the 80's. Ying and Yang of audio opinionists but both important contributors to my audio journey.
     
  19. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Accidentally Zeos. When I knew nothing about headphones one of the first reviews I watched was on his channel and he said: "I will make it very simple for you, buy HD600 or buy HE500". I bought HD600 the very next day and for a year I listened to them both, and loved both.
    Now I understand how lucky I was but whatever are his sins after that, it is all forgiven.
     
  20. toddrhodes

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    A local friend, Jeff. Worked with him at a hifi shop in the late 90s and he was always on another level with his attention to sound and his pursuit of perfection. He did live recordings at Notre Dame and was (and still is) a HUGE McCormack fan. Thing is, he didn't really teach me a whole lot except for providing some great reference examples and also walking me through some of the tactical parts of the hobby like soldering and wire management and such. But his passion for music and audio reproduction was both evident and infectious.

    That said, I've come to diverge from his philosophy a lot in my more recent years. Jeff is all about reproducing unamplified, live instruments as faithfully and realistically as possible. I'm completely different. I'm a metalhead, rock fan, movie score guy, I get into the emotion of music, not the technicalities of it all. I have decent ears and a fairly eclectic taste in music (tonight's lineup: MJ, Tom Petty, Toni Braxton, last night was Slayer and Hans Zimmer) so I've not tried to recreate what he's doing, but I've found the sound, the tone, the emotion in my system that I find appealing. And in some ways, it's in spite of his remarks about certain things. So he's influenced me in several ways, directly and indirectly but at the end of the day, when I consider what I have today and why, he's the primary influence and for that, I'm grateful.
     

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