Hi all,
You will have to excuse me, but I am a bit puzzled by the discussions here. Very genuinely, I have not quite understood the pulse of at least some of it.
When I first became economically independent as a graduate student (under a teaching associateship) in the US at the age of 22 (in 1981/82), I bought a small cassette player/recorder (mono, I think) made by GE for around USD 30. I was so happy to have this little instrument, it's actually difficult to express in words. I used to play all the cassettes that I got from India and in addition I used to record all the famous Indian classical musicians who used to perform in Pittsburgh. I still have Bhimsen Joshi's full performance recorded in that GE (I even got the three cassettes signed by him) in normal bias Sony cassettes. It's not true that at that time I did not know how audio could sound better, because on almost every weekend I was invited to some family (Bengali, Maharashtrian, Kannada, Tamil, Keralite and so on) who used give me home cooked quality Indian food and in exchange I had to sing for them. Most of these people had decent stereo separate systems and many of them used to record my singing in those systems using microphones and mixers etc. I sure knew there were better systems available than my GE, but I was still very proud of my little GE cassette record player and used it and enjoyed it very extensively.
Then after a couple of years of very extensive and almost constant use, that GE started giving some problems, but was still working. At that point I bought a stereo 2-in-1 (AM/FM radio cum cassette) with separable speakers from a brand called Magnavox for about USD 150. I was really amazed to notice the difference a stereo equipment could do (as opposed to a mono). This was also the time my musical horizon started expanding a bit beyond Indian boundaries. I became member of a Western classical music mail-order club and started ordering cassettes of Western classical music. I still have most of those cassettes (just a few days ago I played piano concertos by Chopin bought from that mail-order club on my current system). I also developed some liking for American soft pop. I remember I liked to listen to songs like "All Night Long" by Lionel Ritchie, also songs by Joan Baez.
Then I think in 1985/86 I bought my first stereo separates (all Technics) which consisted of a tuner, a cassette player/recorder, a TT, an amplifier and two medium sized bookshelf speakers. I got all this for under USD 500 from a store which was going out of business. Pankaj Shah, another Indian student doing PhD in Chemistry and my economic advisor at that time got the news of the sale of the century. We both drove to the store some 30 miles away and got the stuff home. The system became the envy of the entire student community living in that complex completely populated by students of all kinds. Around this time, knowing that I now have a TT, many people in the Indian community (settled there) who used to love me very much started giving me LPs as gifts on occasions and I also started buying quite a lot on my own. I still remember a certain Indira Sathyapriya
Home who had (still has) a Bharathanatyam dance school gave me a host of LPs for composing the entire music of a dance drama that I did completely free of cost.
While I enjoyed my system tremendously, I also had the opportunity to hear a lot of excellent gear from around this time. I also could understand the roles of each component and how to pick and choose each. Some of my friends who took up jobs in industry right after a Masters degree, started getting settled and some of them bought really great systems. This was the time I got to hear a Nakamichi Dragon for the first time in my life and also bigger than human size electrostatic speakers, because such a friend got a very decent job in the Bell Labs and he bought a house and got all these stuff. I also lived in that house for the final six or so months before completion of my PhD.
After finishing my PhD and promptly getting married I decided to go to Europe for a post-doc. Pankaj (mentioned above) bought my all-Technics system from me for a very very attractive price. This was my first decent job. After the initial settling-in in a country where almost none of the common people spoke English, my wife and I started looking for decent stereo components. It started with buying a pair of Canton Karat 60 speakers on a demo-piece sale and as many of you know I still have those speakers and listen to them almost everyday.
I'll not bore you anymore with the rest of the story up to the point of my getting the Leben CS300 tube amplifier. But I have a point in telling you all this. I always loved music more than anything else. I am myself a musician. I always bought something that my pocket could "comfortably" allow. I have IMMENSELY enjoyed all my systems starting with the USD 30 GE cassette player to the USD 2500 Leben CS300. And I have been very proud to possess them all. In all this time, I have accumulated a tremendous amount of music (comfortably above a thousand hours, really do not know how much) to the point that it has become very difficult for me to keep all these in an organised manner. BTW, 99% of all my music purchase is still in tact and in top condition, so are my Harman Kardon amplifier and the Canton speakers.
If you really noticed, I am also very very happy to write all the above. I would never understand the dilemma which is the subject of this thread. I'd say: just follow your heart and pocket and be happy. I never worried about if I had too much or too less money for these things. Fortunately, my wife also never seriously interfered.
I do not know if any of this makes any sense to you. If it does, I'll be very happy.
Regards.
