I walked into Kemo's General Store in Seattle, spied an antique
cylinder pay phonograph, plunked a nickle in the slot, and was treated to a revelation: bad as it was by any technical standard, the sound
was nice! Mechanical sound reproduction was not bad! I enjoyed
hearing the William Tell Overture on this machine.

And, then there was that visit to a Tucson audio shop that had
a vintage stereo set up and running: double KLH 9 electrostatics
driven with two stereo Marantz 30 tube amps, run from a Marantz
7 tube preamp, fed by an ADC 10E Mk II cartridge, on a Dual
table, as I recall..... WOW! Depth, breadth, detail, nice tonal
balance - all those good things were there that can make the
reproduced sound of an orchestra a satisfying simile of a real orchestra.....

The day I heard Quads (the original version), I had intended to
buy Magnaplanar tweeter-mid panels for use with a huge subwoofer
I had designed and built (it later appeared in a construction
article in The Audio Amateur as "The Big Bass Box"). The Quads
were set up at Transcendental Audio in Buffalo with Quad
electronics, and a B and O SP-10 cartridge in a forgotten
table/arm. I played the records I had brought all afternoon.
Here, finally, was music rather than "Hi Fi" - the speakers/
electronics/turntable disappeared, and I heard MUSIC!
I bought my first pair of Quads very soon afterward.....