what are your wives/girlfriends biggest objections to your audio purchases?

TONEPUB · « **on:** 28 Jan 2008, 08:15 am »

Im really curious about this one.

My wife says I'm the worlds greatest rationalizer....
(I did convince her that I NEEDED a Naim 555 and
she went along with it)

So I'm curious how you guys get the toys past your
better half. Perhaps we can all learn from each other
and get more in the future!

Can't wait to hear what you come up with!

maxwalrath · « **Reply #1 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 08:39 am »

. I'm not married yet, and relatively irresponsible in a few other ways, so I've got it pretty easy in this regard. Looking forward to the responses though!

TomS · « **Reply #2 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 12:16 pm »

We have a simple system of rules at our house that's been in place for many years.

At least in the good years financially, my wife and I each have a modest pool of discretionary funds for toys (not "family" items). If possible, we add a bit each year. I can use ONLY what's in my fund, trading up/down, etc., and anything goes as far as the capital I already have in my equipment (toys) and any upgrades I choose to spend it on. If I want, I can just hold off purchases and invest it in the hopes my capital goes up occasionally

The #1 rule for harmony is that we can't yield to temptations to tap "family" funds, investments, or any credit cards for toy purchases. Also, if ever needed for household expenses, any cash available would come out, no questions asked. There is no rationalizing allowed so it's all about discipline. It works well at our house.

Having a dedicated room (actually a basement dungeon) that is off the main track of the house, WAF is for the most part a non-issue there too. If it doesn't fit down the stairs, it's probably a no-go. i.e. giant wooden horns wouldn't cut it. Those LS9's are going to be my biggest challenge to that rule!

BTW, she chooses to spend hers on our kids' warmblood horses and showing so my audio habit is a relatively good deal

Tom

soundbitten1 · « **Reply #3 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 01:24 pm »

My wife's biggest objection is cords , cables and electronic boxes . As long as I keep them out of sight she's fine . She's puts up with speakers as long as they're not ugly . After much explaining and convincing I did manage to purchase speakers larger than she really wanted .

MaxCast · « **Reply #4 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 01:34 pm »

Well, I buy something (diamonds, gold, paintings) for her first.
Then it's my turn.
Plus, I too have the basement all to myself so she really doesn't care what I do with it.

If I didn't have or do either of the above, she would not tolerate the room treatments and not allow me to spend the amounts I have on just me.

KCI-JohnP · « **Reply #5 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 01:39 pm »

Appearance. If it's ugly my wife doesn't want it in her house. Can't say I blame her, I love gear but if it sounds great but looks like
the south end of a north bound mule I'm usually not interested.

Best regards,
John

woodsyi · « **Reply #6 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 01:52 pm »

There is an advantage to getting married later in your life than early. We both knew that each of us has interests and hobbies that could not be given up. So we decided to keep separate checking accounts to enable each of us to have discretionary funds for our hobbies when we got married 11 years ago. Each year we allocate our obligations including long term investments and short term rainy day fund savings and the rest is free. It's worked out great in the past. Last year was a little tough as my wife was out of job for 8 months. I had to take on more financial obligations which didn't leave me with much leeway for audio hobby.

It actually worked out great in other ways in retrospect as she was able to oversee our daughter's transition to Kindergarten and she was able to get a few poems and short stories published. Now that she is back to work, I think I can look forward to a little more audio spending. aa

My wife doesn't mind the decor in my Man-cave as long as I keep records off the floor on the adjacent laundry/storage room. She is a treasure.

Thebiker · « **Reply #7 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 01:54 pm »

So far, from the earlier responses, I seem to be the lucky one. Yes it is a cash deal for toys. Neither one of us likes credit card interest charges or debts.

Other than that, all I have to do is get my musician wife to sit down and listen to a piece of gear. She hears more subtleties than I do. If it sounds better than what we have and we can just pay for it, it follows us home

. What could be better?

Walt

TomS · « **Reply #8 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 02:01 pm »

Quote from: woodsyi on 28 Jan 2008, 01:52 pm

... She is a treasure.

I should have added this too, as the most important thing

I feel very blessed to have her (29+ years)

arthurs · « **Reply #9 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 02:09 pm »

I've always thought the WAF thing was a symptom of some other issue around openess and responsibility in a marriage.

I have what I believe to be, one of the great audio wives (she's great period, but in terms of this thread I'll say audio wife)...she generally doesn't question my spending (nor I hers) as long as the parameters listed in the posts above are in check (bills, home projects, retirement, college funds) and in fact she did the legwork and majority of the in-room work herself and with contractors when it came to the room treatments and finish of my dedicated room (Brj loves the story about her painting my audio room while I was at the Superbowl last year)

This past Christmas she worked on the sly with my dealer to get me an Ultrasonic rack setup, pics of it are in my gallery, a very cool gift, and not typically the type of spend wives I hear about related to this hobby would support.

The kicker to all this is my wife has upwards of 90% hearing loss, so she rarely spends time listening as it's more frustrating for her than enjoyable. That makes her support and involvement in my mad pursuits of this stuff all the more amazing to me, and appreciated. I know, I'm biased, but she's really something.....

electricbear · « **Reply #10 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 02:56 pm »

Being in the industry I'm pretty lucky when it come to buying gear. I can typically buy my equipment at cost , keep it for the obligitory period and then pass it on for a slight profit. This profit along with any spiff money that I earn allows me to buy the next addition to the system. My wife does not mind what I buy as long as the funds don't come from the checking account.

sts9fan · « **Reply #11 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 03:19 pm »

I also am in a pretty sweet situation. She does think its crazy but understands I could have a much more destructive hobby. Like gambling or smoking crack. She is also the MUCH bigger bread winner so I am double lucky she is good about it. She was not too pleased with the looks of the Druids but was still fine with it. I have made it clear that there WILL be lots of audio gear in our home. I pretty much get one big (for me) purchase a year. This is pretty much the only expense that we do not care about equally so its no that big a deal. All I have to tell her is that the new (insert gear here) will make Ani and Les sound even better. SHE ROCKS!!!!

She also said that for my "Ring" I can equal value in audio gear!!! Boo Ya!!

rockadanny · « **Reply #12 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 03:27 pm »

So far, biggest objection has been room treatment. I can understand her reluctance for "uglifying" the room. After all, she said I can take ANY room other than our living room, which is currently where my gear resides, and make it an audio room. I just don't like any other room in our current home for audio. Will definitely look for an audio friendly room in our next home so I can even treat the ceiling.

JoshK · « **Reply #13 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 03:49 pm »

Quote from: rockadanny on 28 Jan 2008, 03:27 pm

So far, biggest objection has been room treatment. I can understand her reluctance for "uglifying" the room. After all, she said I can take ANY room other than our living room, which is currently where my gear resides, and make it an audio room. I just don't like any other room in our current home for audio. Will definitely look for an audio friendly room in our next home so I can even treat the ceiling.

I am kind of in the same situation. My wife and I listen to music a lot. My wife enjoys it as much as me and if there isn't music playing, she usually will yell at me, "music meistro!" She likes it when I play DJ too, which is nice because I am not much of a fan of some of her taste in music, but she likes pretty much all of mine (except for tool

).

My wife complains the most about too much stuff in our house from the boxes of parts I've accumulated (mostly the tube collecting). A bit about the money when I am buying too much stuff, which is fair. She wants to have reign over the looks of the living room, and would like to push my system into a dedicated room but then she waffles because she enjoys listening to it.

Acoustic treatments are needed in the room but don't really pass mustard. I think free standing traps that can be put in a closet when not in use will be the ultimate solution.

meby · « **Reply #14 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 04:14 pm »

My wife only objects to the boxes. She hates them especially when she comes home from work and there is a huge box sitting on the floor of the living room. I save all my boxes for shipping as I hate to spend money on packaging if I do not have to as that is money that could be spent on equipment.

saisunil · « **Reply #15 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 04:21 pm »

She would ideally like to have a Bose Clock Radio - small and simple one box solution with a remote - that can't possibly be played too loud!

First objection is -- turn that "noise" down (which is mostly Jazz or classical)
Second - why is there is so much equipment and why there isn't a simple and straight forward way to use it (for her)
Third - so the new <insert new equiment> really sounds better and how by much? You Really hear it? Are you sure you are going it (forever)?
Fourth - What are those huge panels doing on the walls?
Fifth - Why are the cables so think and why are there so many cables and why you keep changing them?
Sixth - Why can't you control everything with one remote?

and there are more ...

Funny part is -- I feel some of the pains of this hobby myself but my desire for better sound (thus far) supercedes the cost of change and the agony of upgrade!

No wonder Bose makes more sales than any other commercial company making consumer audio products! I wonder I I'll give in one day! I hope Bose makes a better sounding product....

zapper7 · « **Reply #16 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 04:23 pm »

With my dedicated room the looks are not an issue, and she loves to see movies in it, which is a way to make the room enjoyable and functional for the whole family.
The biggest concern is the $$$$ for the items. She does see that if we have a problem month, I can liquidate for similar money paid, which I remind her she can't do with clothes, shoes, etc.

I think she has more in clothes and shoes than I do in my whole room, except the room itself, of course.

meby · « **Reply #17 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 04:44 pm »

The other main objection I forgot about is that I am not allowed to play Led Zeppelin while she is in the house. She always says the Robert Plant sounds like a howler monkey. When ever I get new music and ask her what she thinks and she does not like it, she will say at least they are not screaming like that one guy you like.

ecramer · « **Reply #18 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 06:52 pm »

I knew there was a reason that i was not a big Led Zeppelin fan but never could pinpoint the reason.

Quote from: meby on 28 Jan 2008, 04:44 pm

The other main objection I forgot about is that I am not allowed to play Led Zeppelin while she is in the house. She always says the Robert Plant sounds like a howler monkey. When ever I get new music and ask her what she thinks and she does not like it, she will say at least they are not screaming like that one guy you like.

Airborn · « **Reply #19 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 07:07 pm »

First, let me start by saying my wife is a saint for putting up with me in general and this crazy audio pasttime in particular. I can only imagine what she thinks when I propose spending significant amounts of money on things that she just doesn't hear and are not that important to her. Fortunately, she believes that if it's important to me it is good enough for her.

That being said, she has voiced several opinions (I won't call them "objections" because she didn't say absolutely "no", but I'm smart enough not to push it).

1. No room treatments in the living room. My system started out as our home theater set up in the main living room. Because we don't have enough room for a dedicated listening room "those cloth things" are banned from the corners and on the walls of the main living room.

2. No loud listening past 8 pm. We have some disagreement over the definition of "loud", but lets just say that I rarely can listen at my preferred listening levels except on the weekends because we have small children that are asleep by 8 pm.

3. The boxes. I have all the original packing material for most of my audio purchases and I think she dislikes that clutter more than the actual system in her living room. The large speaker crates in particular take up half of one bay in our garage.

4. No buying 3 or more of the same item. This is not really a stated objection, but whenever I get 3 or more amps, 3 sets of speaker cables, 3 pairs of loudspeakers, etc. I can see by her look that one needs to go. I guess 2 is OK for comparison, but 3 or more of any particular items tends to be seen as overkill. This must be why I want to start a second system.

Within the above parameters, I can get pretty much anything I want as long as we can afford it and it doesn't require going into debt (credit card) or take the place of a "family" expense, such as monthly bills or saving for the kids' college, etc.