Since JBL makes speakers costing $200 and speakers costing over $2000, it's a little hard to know what sort of quality you have or what you might be thinking of for an upgrade.

To make any meaningful comment one needs to know your current speaker model number, and what dollar amount you would put into new speakers.

With that information on the table you can get some good advice.

Dahlquist DQ-10 and Dynaco kit tube amp and James Taylor.

There was a nearly life long build up to my ah ha moment. I am 38 years old and have never had a hifi home system. My current system is in the shipping process.

I remember as a child tip toeing in front of the Magnovox console record play to reach in and drop albums on the turntable. I listened to my mom and dad's music of the 50's, 60's, and 70's. I remember specifically "These Boots are Made for Walking" by nancy sinatra, racing music by the Beach Boys, a wide range of Motown, hippy tunes and Elvis of every style.

My dad owned a small trucking company and I would go with him in his truck and we listened to 8 tracks. We were on the open road. I was at most 8 or 9 pushing in 8 tracks of trucking music with the windows down and diesel fumes in our noses. We rocked out :)

Later I got my own cassette deck from wal-mart to have in my room, I knew it was not as easy to listen to songs but it was the new thing and I could walk around with my Sony Walkman and jam. Then I got a CD player and I could not imagine that there would be anything come after that until it did.

I have known for some time that Vinyl is superior in many ways but never really thought much about it. I have bought vinyl from time to time over the last 18 years when I would find something cool like a mint condition tri fold Woldstock Live album or special edition Nirvana albums but never thought much about playing them.

I have regualarly used every type of musical device aside from the wax cylinder.

One day I was sitting in bed with my lady and she played me a tune on her cell phone. She wanted to know what I thought about the song. For whatever reason that was the point I realized I had no idea what i thought about the song. All I seemed to hear was bytes of info.

At that point I started reading about vinyl and hifi.

I do not really want my music to be that easy to take along any more. I want it stationary so when I listen to it I mean to listen to it. I want to enjoy the equipment, the media, the sound. I want to listen to music not just "have music on".

What a great question to ask in your post!

Yurii wrote:

Hey gang! I jumped into the world of hi-fi recently and am absolutely thrilled my entry-level system and rediscovering all of my favorite artists. My system is a NAD 316 with a Pro-Ject Essential TT and JBL bookshelf monitors. I've been meaning to get back into vinyl and decided to pull the trigger about a month ago. My "Ah-ha!" moment came when Stairway To Heaven started to play. I've heard this hundreds of times through all different kinds of mixes, but this was the first time via vinyl. I not only experienced musical nuances previously unheard but also the 3D experience provided by what is referred to as the soundstage. Since then my girlfriend and I have buying albums at a record pace - going so far as to trade in all of our disc media (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, video game) for credit towards new vinyl. Each new acquisition as introduced me to new sounds I would have otherwise ignored. Before I primarily listened to metal; now I'm happy to sit down and listen to some African Jazz or Blues or R&B. Of course, I still love turning up Witchcraft, The Sword, Motorhead etc... What are some of your ah-ha moments? Also, what do you think would be a better upgrade - the JBLs to PSB bookshelf or stock Ortofon 5e to the 2M Blue?

African Jazz? What the hell is that?

I started reading the original post with some interest, and I liked it up to the "metal" part. I can't help but notice the underrepresentation of heavy music in audiophila. Before I talk about the a-ha moment for me, I will say this: I have picked up on the fact that most of audiophile music - though recorded and often even performed very well, it often lacks the drama I want - at least among the "popular" music categories. I haven't gotten too into jazz, and I haven't gotten to listen to good "classical" on a hi-fi yet.

At any rate, I had been reading about hi-fi very casually for a long time before going to a hi-fi store. The first set-up for vinyl I heard was at least expensive, but it did not grip me. But, a little later, on the hunt for better hi-fi, I had an appointment with Aris Audio just outside of Salt Lake. We started on a rather more modest system, but when the propietor heard my first record choice, he said we should move it to the "big" set-up. And that is when I got to hear Baroness's "Isak" (Red Album, 45 rpm double-LP from Relapse Records) on a nice ClearAudio TT (Not sure the model of it, the tonearm, or the cartridge, but it was one of those weird tripod-y TT), through reference Audio Research phono pre, line stage, and a Reference 150 power amp into Sonus Faber Cremona Elipsa floorstanders. It was mind-boggling.

I must say that it ruined me on heavy music on hifi setups. It takes a special recording and a forgiving setup to work well (Vienna Acoustics The Music loudspeakers, for example, do NOT like heavy music if it suffers from modern over-compression - the SFs are rather more forgiving). Rage Against the Machine's self-titled sounded shockingly amazing, where Pelican's What We All Come to Need was surprisingly dull-sounding in the drum department. But that first hifi listening of Baroness's Isak was incredible. Scott, of Aris, mentioned in passing that it was a good recording. I didn't know then how disappointed I would be later with so many other heavy recordings.

And regarding your choice of metal: bravo. Both Witchcraft's and the Sword's most recent releases are face-meltingly epic. They work well on my crappy setup at home, but not as well with the super hifi - at least with the Vienna's. Do you listen to Baroness as well?