Hi @Blacknote ,
Thanks for the full reply. I do understand and very much agree with what you have written.
My own situation seems somewhat similar. I got into HiFi at school after visiting a friend’s house in the 1970s (where they had quite a decent B&O system) and listening to some Pink Floyd (Ummagumma - AFAIR). I subsequently bought two PF albums and played them on our meagre ULTRA Model 6018 mono system at home and wondered what had happened?
First upgrade was to get my parents to have the stereo conversion which consisted of an additional powered loudspeaker and some degree of change on the deck - I am not sure how much intervention was required from the basic shipped ‘mono’ unit - but we then had ‘stereo’.
Nevertheless, our system was so bad that the first time I played Pink Floyd The Wall the stylus skipped at one of the crescendos and it was not until some years later that I realised I was missing a whole section of music on that album!
Anyway, I was so impressed with the system at my friends family home that after much persuasion I managed to convince my parents to splash some cash and get a B&O system and I was on my way.
Your observations re other music genres - particularly jazz - are interesting. The forum has been very useful for me in respect of discovering interesting music. One particular enquiry on the forum (here) caused me to add the album Chi by Dave Liebman, Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake to my regular playlist!