spouse approval of products

[Invidiosulus]

At the rate I'm going by the time I do get married(if that happens) I will have so much stuff she will just have to accept it

Of course I say this and then lynnm's story comes to mind

Peace, Josh

[Cut-Throat]

I think the key to this is getting so much stuff, it is impossible for your spouse to keep track of it. :

I learned this long ago with fishing rods. Once you get about a dozen, it is inmpossible to detect a new one coming into the home.

I have about a dozen amps and dozen pairs of speakers. Heck, I can't even keep track myself.

She did wince a bit when the Klipsch Belles arrived though. I told her that I had plans for them in the living room. After she steamed on that for a couple hours, I told her I was kidding and that they were going to stay in the basement. She was so happy that they were not going in the living room! - She still does not like them. Wayyyyy to Big for her! It's the only stereo gear that I have that she really, really hates!

She does love tube amps though. Loves the retro look and glowing tubes. She even turns the units on herself!

[Fish]

Its really good to know this WAF thing(at least here) is not as bad as we thought.I usually try to justify the great deal,then she say's,you work for your money,get it if you want it.I will confess she has a formal living area with NO A/V system,go figure.I have a dedicated h/t room/den that's insulated on all walls.The moral of the story is,if a spouse does'nt like/put up with our mild sickness,there's little hope for our unhappy home.

[Frzninvt]

Oh my God! My wife is very understanding but I certainly drive her crazy with all the changes, selling equipment, buying other equipment, etc. She says is it ever going to be finished? I guess the answer is NO! I have mistakenly said yes just after this piece, and then the next piece comes along. I am near the final stages though. I just need a house and some K-Horns and I will be just about done. Thank goodness she enjoys the HT just as much as I do. She really enjoys it when I find a duplicate component, I keep the better one and make a good profit on the one that I am selling. Funny how cash makes 'um forget stuff like that. Such is life. Such a great hobby but no one to really share it with, oh well all for me!

[Mallette]

Hmmm. Must have hit cancel, as I replied here and it just seemed to disappear.

Anyway, some of you may recall that I refer to my spouse as the "PAW" for "Perfect Audiophile Wife." Though significantly younger than me and raised on CD's, she definitely prefers phono. I say phono as opposed to vinyl because she comes home with boxes of mixed vinyl and shellac. Loves old jazz 78's. Most significantly, she GAVE UP THE BEDROOM to my 'horns because it was the only room in the house with corners. Nothing but audio in there except for the bed. I'll post pix if I ever take the time to figure out how it's done.

She also fully supports my research into DAAS (digital-analog audio servers) and my location recording habit. In fact, she's wanted to take off and do a trip through East Texas and Lousiana to record folk and gospel in the wild.

A keeper, I think. No idea how I got this lucky...

Dave

[Hofy]

me at 6pm Dec31: Dear, What do you have planned for tomorrow?

wife: Nothing much, just want to spend time with you.

me: Can we do that on the way to Milwaukee? (2 hour + drive)

wife: Why are we going there?

me: Speakers that I just bought, we need to go get them.

She was happy. We spent the day together and now she has a nice sounding HT setup.

I am just glad she doesnt venture into my office. I would be a bit pressed to explaing the pile of amps, tubes and other goodies on my bench.

[Strabo]

Yesterday as I was laughing out loud reading this thread to my wife. She didn't find humour in it though.

Then later in the day while she was channel surfing, "I suppose your going to change the remote on me now that I have this one figured out."

"No honey, that piece will be staying for a while, but what do you think of this amp?"..lol

Can't lock yourself into promising not to upgrade.

[lynnm]

It's interesting how many of the ladies like the look of tube amps. I have actually seen my wife staring at my amp when the lights are down low. Her reaction when she saw it for the first time at the dealer's was:

That thing is beautiful but what if one of our cats sniff the big tubes ?

I said "Just once babe - Just once ! "

[Mallette]

>I have actually seen my wife staring at my amp when the lights are down low.

Interesting. If my wife caught me staring at my amp when the lights are down low, I'd be hearing a ringing sound in my head for a week. :->

Dave

[Colin]

My permanent partner in life, little miss sensitive ears, is the touchstone for all my purchases and many of my evaluations. Since marriage a dozen years ago, Ive learned not to make a move without requesting (and often heeding) her input. I ask her, and a small number of other friends, what they think about any new piece of equipment under serious audition.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1002/omegats1.htm

Sooner or later, every married or unmarried audiophile is bound to come against that wall of feminine resistance known affectionately in the audio hobby as the "wife acceptance factor" (WAF). Of course today, with the myriad of couplings devised by the human species, it would be more politically correct to call this element a spousal acceptance factor, but WAF it is and WAF it shall remain. This immovable force of interpersonal physics is not easily swayed by the exciting qualities that make the male of the species clamor like jumbo-sized children arguing over what my wife calls, "stereo equipment".

The WAF is not moved by crossover-less, single driver, super-sensitive, gold binding posts, wide frequency, narrow tolerance, resin impregnated laminates or whizzer-cones. No, the majority of "little miss sensitive ears" - with whom I, and many of my online compadres, share our humble and equipment-crowded abodes with, are patently immune to the finer points of the tweaking audiophile hobby! They care not for the space, décor, noise, expense, time and energy allocated to this in-home hobby.

More is the pity, too. For the ladies' higher hearing range extends further and flatter than the range of any tweaking male audiophile. This upper-end female capability results in an enviable sensitivity to tonal truth, flatness, evenness and balance in the mid-frequency range, which middle-aged tweaking audiophiles can barely remember, and yet, impossibly covet.

Besides, we have a deal with this house, little miss sensitive ears and I. There are 12 rooms, not counting the garage. Two of those rooms are mine: the family room at the back and an office. She can not say or do anything about those two rooms. I can not say or do anything about the other 10 (which is the way it was anyway). So therefore, I scored 2 rooms of my own! One is stacked with amplifiers and loudspeakers coming and going, the other is piled high with PCs and books. (Okay, Ive made several changes to both my media room and my office at her suggestion.)

After seeing The Matrix on a friends 52 screen, she who lobbied for a larger TV. She liked the Bottlehead 2A3 Paramours instantly. Plus, despite their size, she really likes the big old horns because of their smooth, wide and accurate presentation. Besides, stuck in the corner as they are, the Khorn footprint is less than the Cornwalls, which sat 3 to 4 out from all walls. In New York City, she though my paltry system was better than the gorgeous Avantgarde horns with the beautiful Viva amplifiers.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0203/uptownhorns.htm

[mobile homeless]

little miss sensitive ears?

Just wondering if you could hear the audible groan over here... Two times in six months is too much. Three times? Well... As I said the first time, if I die without ever seeing "WAF" again, it will be considered a happy, "natural" death.

I am desperately trying to remember what Bonehead coined that cliche term... It sounds like something Tom Norton would devise after drinking a flagon of psilocybin laced vodka. I vaguely remember some Stereophile loon taking credit but now have seen it all over since the 80s. I can see him chuckling at the presumed cleverness of the whole idea.

Most men are dull, stupid beasts.

kh

[fini]

mobile,

I am digging your new avatar!! This could start a trend...

fini

[Audible Nectar]

"Just wondering if you could hear the audible groan over here... Two times in six months is too much. Three times? Well... As I said the first time, if I die without ever seeing "WAF" again, it will be considered a happy, "natural" death.

I am desperately trying to remember what Bonehead coined that cliche term... It sounds like something Tom Norton would devise after drinking a flagon of psilocybin laced vodka. I vaguely remember some Stereophile loon taking credit but now have seen it all over since the 80s. I can see him chuckling at the presumed cleverness of the whole idea.

Most men are dull, stupid beasts."

The person who coined that term probably was a salesperson (and we are well aware that most audio mags are/were sales publications). I can't tell you how many sales were lost when I was in the biz because "the wife said no" - and how many Bo$e were sold as a result. Sure, I wanted to sell good audio gear, but I didn't need to increase the business of marriage counselors in the process.....

Placing a "WAF" label on a particular product is misinformative, though, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My wife is a good example. Many would put a low WAF label on Klipsch, but not MY wife.

It's interesting (and most welcome) that my wife has NO problem with the big Klipsch. In fact, she's become a believer. I showed her a pic of Edster00's rosewood Khorns and she said "They are beautiful". . We are thinking about installing a pair of Klipschorns in "her" sitting room, as part of a vintage 2 channel system (she also likes the look of tube gear and old Mcintosh stuff). It's cool to be the "electronics consultant" for my wife's room - a most unique and welcome position.

When she hears a lesser system at someone else's home or store (especially the local stores' "top of the line" demo system), she will often comment later that it "sounded OK, but it's sure not like the Klipsch".

She also can hear the difference in components - something she first doubted she could do. When we acquired the Rega Planet CD player, we A/B'd it against the DVD player, and she instantly placed her stamp of approval on the Rega. I had to rearrange the rack when the Rega was purchased (it is a top loader) - my wife reminded me every day that I needed to do this, so she could use the Rega for CD's instead of the DVD machine.

Now this may not seem like anything too unusual, but my wife is NOT electronically inclined in the least. She does understand what music sounds like, however - and can discern the difference in sound between different pieces of equipment.

Simplicity is important in my wife's eyes - if she can't run it, she doesn't want it. She hates MS Windows (and she doesn't know what hate is).

In this home, Klipsch have my wife's blessing. Yeah, my wife is a keeper

[Chris Robinson]

There are a few wives of hubbies on this board who might fall in that category, but I would guess they are the minority ... Maybe Kelly's Audrey, Steve's Becky, and Dndphishin's wife. I think for the most part, however, women are focused on different things and don't sport the attention span required to "drill down" into the minutae that will bring a fabulous sounding system into the home ... and done over a period of YEARS.

This is a gross generalization, of course, and comes with all those caveats.

When I ran off to Syracuse a few years ago and came back with my first pair of Cornwalls, I thought they were pretty big. As I carried each into our family, Carrie (my wife) looked at me like I was absolutely bananas. Keep in mind that we had little Bose Acoustimass 5's in there just months before. Going from teenie cubes to honkin' Cornwalls requires imagination, trust, love and a HUGE leap of faith.

Months later, when I dragged in the Belle (freshly stained grills from cat pee), she thought I was loonie, but gave it a chance and liked it. But by now we had a WALL of L-C-R speakers IN FRONT of our built-in cabinets that were shallow pine shelves essentially, and ill-suited to sporting larger TVs or any serious audio equipment. We fixed that by gutting the family room and getting those gonker speakers into cabinets. They're virtually invisible now to anyone not looking for them. They B L E N D ...

In late 2001, I brought home a beat pair of Klipschorns and my buddy helped me get them into the basement through the exterior entry. They were worn, discolored, chipping, peeling beasts. When Klipschorns are standing free in the middle of the room, they are enormous, imposing, butt-ugly MF's ...

When Carrie came home later, I said my new speakers were in the basement ... She went down to look, came up a moment later and said, "I didn't see any speakers but those two old refrigerators sure are something ..."

Three months later they were all fixed up and refinished ... and I thought they'd stay in the basement until our next home. One day my wife asked me when I was bringing them up to the living room and I said, "What ?????"

They've been in our living room ever since, hiding in the corners and she enjoys the music when she happens to be wandering through.

I've got a keeper as well.

[Michael Greenway]

Well mine was not too happy with the KLF30's. She thinks speakers should be little and out of the way. She changed her mind one evening when I was in the garage putting a t-case in my FJ40. She watched "Lord of the Rings" and afterwards exclaimed that she never thought sound could add so much to a movie. She actually said she likes them now and bought me a 57" RP HDTV for X-mas. I think she is getting me a new progressive scan DVD player for V-day.

She considers going to the "TV-room" like going out!

She always asks...what movie do you have today and even gets depressed if I don't have one. I'm going to need a bigger cabinet to store DVD's in!