I have been blessed with a girlfriend who is "tolerant" of my audio & electronics based "cluster....". While she does enjoy having all of the "goodies" that we have to take advantage of, she doth think that i carry on just a bit much. Nonetheless, she is willing to listen to systems when i've made changes and share her findings with me. Since she is not into "audio" and has no sense of brand or model recognition, i'm basically getting the "straight dope" based on what she hears. So as not to bias her opinions or what she should listen for, i simply play music and let her tell me what she notices most. Most of the time, things are pretty obvious and she wants to speak out quickly, so i've had to remind her to relax for a bit and take in a deeper breath of the systems performance and traits. I do this AFTER i have formed my own opinions so that we can then compare notes. While she may not share the "audiophile vocabulary" of most of us here, her descriptions are typically spot on and coincide with my observations. I have also found that my Brother shares most of same sonic likes / dislikes that we do, so having three different opinions come up with the same findings can be pretty re-assuring that i'm on the right track. Now my Father on the other hand........ Sean >
Amps and Women
I have been happily married for over 20 years now. I am the supposed audiophile, yet my wife ,god bless her, can pick out the differences in amplifiers in about two seconds. I change over from my Spectral stuff to my Classe stuff,"Honey did you change the system again?" She was not even listening seriously, she was doing something totally different. So the question I pose, and my wife is not the only one I have noticed this with, do women in general possess better listening/hearing capabilties then men?? That is why I take her(and usually with great resentment on her part.) to audition audio equipment. In fact, in all fairness, she narrows the choices pretty quickly.