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How have others kept their music habit alive while also having kids?

Mr Pig said:
If you teach the kids to be careful with things, not to touch certain things, you won't have a problem. My Hi-Fi has never been removed, hidden or protected. The kids have never done any harm to it. In fact the only damage I have ever had was a visiting teenager pushing in a tweeter on my Kans!

I despair when I see people talking about how their kids wreck stuff and there is nothing they can do about it. I've had friends who's kids broke every ornament they had. The kids aren't bad, it's the parents that are stupid! If you teach the kids how to behave properly, they will. Some people just have no idea how to do that.

But they usually bleat on about how they've tried everything but that's just the way the kids are. Garbage! You watch them with the kids and they are just utterly clueless. Nobody likes being told they don't know how to discipline their kids though so there is nothing you can do about it.

Unless of course the kids have some kind of mental health problem, which some do. I know a few folk who had kids that were a huge problem when they were younger, one spent half his childhood drugged up to keep him on the ground. But if you've got normal kids, teach them. They are smart, even as toddlers. If you can train a dog not to crap in your house you can certainly train a child not to smash up your Hi-Fi.
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Yep thats pretty much my take on it, my daugher has been great and now even has her own small system at the age of seven!

I have managed to teach her firstly not to mess and then later how to use things responsibly, she don't use the turntable but she does use the ds.
 
hockman said:
This thread makes me very sad. I can understand the need to 'protect' the hifi from young 'uns but why are spouses otherwise generally so inconsiderate and unsupportive of a healthy and pleasurable hobby?

FFS, it's not drugs or whores!

If it were me, I'd seriously consider divorce since I think the general intolerance is symptomatic of other deeper underlying shit going on.
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I`m inclined to agree but from observation (not experience) having children seems to skew parents priorities from what had been the norm, and usually to a different degree between mother and father. Obviously there are reasons for this and most people seem to think it is all worthwhile - eventually.
I`m lucky as Mrs BM has always encouraged me to get a good system, the only proviso being that we can`t have Quad ESLs as the room isn`t big enough - and in fact the room isn`t big enough.
 
hockman said:
This thread makes me very sad. I can understand the need to 'protect' the hifi from young 'uns but why are spouses otherwise generally so inconsiderate and unsupportive of a healthy and pleasurable hobby?

FFS, it's not drugs or whores!

If it were me, I'd seriously consider divorce since I think the general intolerance is symptomatic of other deeper underlying shit going on.
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I kept my system during the years the kids were growing up, but I hardly listened to it. Frankly, there was'nt the time and music ceased to be a priority. My wife never objected, except to the Quad 57's, which, in truth, are ugly as s..t. They were too big anyway, so I managed with Monitor Audio standmounts.

Now the kids have moved out and I am back to enjoying the music daily. I even have a dedicated music room. The 3 kids all love music and enjoy the quality they hear in the system. I have even got them all interested in opera.
 
I have the opposite "problem" with my wife. She will not accept any compromise at all, thinks spending £8k on speakers perfectly sensible (we can make saving elsewhere she says!) and is very sensitive to system changes. We spend most of my evenings listening to music together, life is really good.
 
Arkless Repairs said:
It does seem to be the case, in my experience, that women are generally nowhere near as keen on music as we are.... Even those I have known that have professed a keen interest in music have soon showed their true colours by making the TV the priority over the HI FI! :(
And on those occasions when they say they do want to listen to music it always has to be quiet enough to easily talk over it.... which they then proceed to do!
I'll never understand 'em...
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I think I could write a PhD on the subject.... Of course there ARE women who appreciate the sound of decent hifi but generally nowhere near as nerdy about it as us simple males! :D

Back to the OT, I taught my kids not to touch but also put my LP12 up high. Only damage I ever had was a pushed in paper tweeter on AR18s. But there is just less time to sit and relax once the kiddies come along........ and when they're in bed it has to be down low. The upside is the importance of keeping a hobby when a parent. It's good to switch off from kids sometimes (not that SWMBO would agree!)
 
ex brickie said:
I think I could write a PhD on the subject.... Of course there ARE women who appreciate the sound of decent hifi but generally nowhere near as nerdy about it as us simple males! :D

Back to the OT, I taught my kids not to touch but also put my LP12 up high. Only damage I ever had was a pushed in paper tweeter on AR18s. But there is just less time to sit and relax once the kiddies come along........ and when they're in bed it has to be down low. The upside is the importance of keeping a hobby when a parent. It's good to switch off from kids sometimes (not that SWMBO would agree!)
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I've only ever known of one women hifi enthusiast in all my years...
I don't think I've ever seen a women take any notice of (it doesn't seem to even register!) even the most stunning sounding hifi...
 
Arkless Repairs said:
Indeed! :D A fine example of their inscrutable weirdness! Apparently even the thrilling sound of a V12 on full bore does nothing for 'em :eek:
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The smooth purr of a V12 XJS was certainly far less impressive to the future Mrs BM than the fact that it immediately dumped ice cold air conditioning water on her feet. (many years ago).
 
My wife is obviously weird:
Spent a couple of days describing the hifi as "fuzzy" - this is MDAC, EAR890 and ML Summits, so fuzzy isn't what it does, but she was insistent. It sounded fine to me. Eventually I tightened the speaker connections on the Summits - she immediately was happy again.
Just taken her to Le Mans, she loved the howling Corvettes and didn't complain about the burnout we did outside Bleu Sud on mad Friday!
 
JemHayward said:
My wife is obviously weird:
Spent a couple of days describing the hifi as "fuzzy" - this is MDAC, EAR890 and ML Summits, so fuzzy isn't what it does, but she was insistent. It sounded fine to me. Eventually I tightened the speaker connections on the Summits - she immediately was happy again.
Just taken her to Le Mans, she loved the howling Corvettes and didn't complain about the burnout we did outside Bleu Sud on mad Friday!
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Go and double check that your wife isn't a post op tranny! :D
 
Definitely all woman, believe me. She has other talents that don't really need discussion here, but I do the cooking!
 
Loving this thread :)

My solution was headphones in the early days (albeit with a big valve headphone amp - had a custom acrylic valve cover made - and it survived)

Later on, after the seemingly mandatory pushed in tweeter (courtesy of a visiting mini-beast), I swapped to big ML electrostatics, which are suitably huge and intimidating, with aluminium woofers and steel grilles ... Sadly the "tweeter pusher-inner" hasn't been back to explore the HT internals ;-)

My wife insists everything is "a bit too loud" - apart from Gardener's World - funny that ?! - so most critical listening is still done in glorious isolation - but it sure keeps me happy :)

George
 
Tee-hee !

I'm sorry to say she has NEVER tried on ANY of a sequence of gradually more and more expensive headphones - you'd think natural curiosity would mean she would try ONCE in twelve years, even if only to murmur "very nice, dear", but no ...
 
Of all the Hi-Fi stuff I've bought the only thing that I can think of that actually showed approval of was the Mana, she noticed what it did and liked it. I never had to argue with her about buying more.

She didn't like the Kans much but conceded that they sounded more tolerable as the amplifier got better.
 
I sorted my problem easily, I wasn't well paid enough to afford keeping my very expensive hi-fi and so sold it to buy a house! I had a cheaper LP12/Nait/Kans system for a while and then changed to a cd system with an MCD Pro but another hobby took so much of my time up I hardly got chance to listen to anything.

A few years ago I got back into listening to music as I found time but I must admit I still prefer the fresh air and getting dirty on my mtb. My kids also love "big cd's" as they call my vinyl collection and even they've taken to vinyl over cd's as well, without my saying anything to them about which they prefer.
 
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