If you discover sound AFTER you discover She Who Must Be Obeyed, you're potentially in very deep dookey.
If you discovered sound before you met Divine Creature Of My Dreams, explain clearly, "This is who I am; this is what I do." And then never, never, never back away. |
My setup resembles Jeff's, but required less drilling:
My monos are sitting on hanging metal brackets purchased at HD for $7 each, hanging from the 2x8 basement ceiling joists directly under the speakers. 8' cables then go up into the sidewalls and come out baseboard slits cut for the Red Dawn. Longish (3m + 6m) interconnects join the rack-mounted pre to the monos below. This way I can walk under or store stuff under the monos, and the fact that they're in the air reduces vibration and assists cooling (Aleph 2s).
The only thing visible in the room are the silver Nordost "ribbons" flowing from the sidewalls to the Parsifals. Looks cool to me; acceptable to Ellen.
Good Luck |
Since I am a female, I will try to answer this one with that in mind. Years ago, before I got involved in hi-end stereo, I used to look at wires, speakers, stereo equipment as just cluttered furniture. After I started getting interested in the high end, I started looking at them in a different way - more like part of the atmosphere of a room. If you can get her more interested in this hobby, she will start looking at them from a different perspective. Does she listen to the music with you? Ask her what some of her favorite music is, then buy some cd's for her and listen together. Hope this helps |
Hey, Piet -
If your wife doesn't want you to spend too much money AND wants to hide the amps; then it seems to me that you have now been put into a win/lose position.
Now, when you say 2 ML33h power - are you saying the Mark Levinson Nº33 Reference Monaural Power Amplifiers?
If so, how could ANYONE want to HIDE those puppies! So sleek and powerful!
Cables are EXPENSIVE. Wouldn’t you also need IC's for the preamp?
Maybe you should go out and start looking at cables (what you need if the gear stays close - zero - and what you would need to hide it). Most folks, that are not intimately into this hobby, don’t realize how expensive cabling can be. After all, we're not going down to Good Guys and buying a roll of electrical cord -
(- now let's NOT turn this thread into ONE of THOSE please ;-} )
With the gear that you have, you can't settle for cheap cables to meet the "spend no money" requirement. You could kill the whole setup in one cheap spending spree.
I believe that by helping your wife understand that these things go hand in hand, it may help her to understand why you would either NOT hide them (and who would WANT to!) or that you're gonna be spending more $.
I think that most of these type situations can be resolved peacefully if the man takes a little more time to help his wife/girlfriend understand WHY and not just WHEN and WHAT.
Just my two cents -
Best of luck
AJ |
My dear girlfriend thanks you kindly for that remark, Sean. Admitting my gear will sound better, she just does not want me to invest too much in this hobby/addiction. |
Piet, i have to warn you now before things get out of control. If you ever get your system running the way that you want, your wife WILL hear the difference and understand where you and the rest of us are coming from. In turn, she will go back to work at Bose, badmouth the company products and lose her job. Since times are tough right now, you might want to wait to get things "dialed in" until the economy picks back up somewhat. At least she'll be able to find a decent job if / when she does "speak the truth" to her bosses : ) Sean
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PS... It took "guts" to admit where she works at : ) |
Buy some halcro monoblocks and put fake plants on them (she'll never know). |
Thank you guys, for your moral and musical support.
BTW, she actually works at Bose's, which of course makes my position not better (no use explaining that Bose is nice for 'normal' consumer market).
I'll forward your comments and post her comments!
Piet |
Yeah Dekay, Ernie does have his amp system "suspended" under the flooring. Besides being slightly neater in terms of less clutter to see, i don't doubt that this DRASTICALLY cuts down on the microphonics / transfer of vibrations to the amps too.
If you can't mount the amps under the flooring or find some other "convenient" way to hide them, you have no other choice but to play "hardball". As to what your wife has to say, tell her that she'll have to compromise on this one. Not only is it important to you, it is cheaper to keep the amps closer to the speakers and will sound better. In turn, tell her that she's got a "favor" coming the next time that you two disagree on something. Pick your "fights" and make them worthwhile. Otherwise, ruling with an "iron fist" has always worked for me : ) Sean
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If you can swing an under the floor installation, go for it. Did/does Subaguru have this setup as well? I'm with your wife on this one (the less of this "crap" I have to look @ when listening to music, the better:). I have everything tucked away, out of sight, except the speakers and stands (couldn't figure that one out and still get decent sound). Also, if you happen to have a closet running behind the speaker wall (our hallway closet does) this is a great place to hide the electronics. This setup (the closet) actually shortened the speaker cable runs compared to a previous configuration and as an added bonus pets and children do not bother the equipment. An armoire would help as well, but then you would not be able to use a good equipment rack (I tried this before and much prefer the sound of the current rack and shelving). |
Go to Radio Shack and buy some cheap Mega cable $1 per foot or even better the 14 gauge cable at 10 meter lengths and regular length - check and see if the sound changes very much with the different lengths. If not then it will not with better cable - try Alpha Core Copper in 7 gauge. |
get a new wife ,or buy a bose wave radio,or tell her sorry but this is how it is, like it or lump it. |
Try hiding the wife, instead! Happy Tunes! |
BUY her a ROLEX and see what happens.It worked with me,and I have a lot of audio gear laying around the house.CHEERS. |
You have two solutions:
1)- Put poweramps under Avalon stands
2)- look for a new wife!
...and 3) say her "Honey, listen your favourite song with ML in their position; a pity sell these babies!
Good luck! |
I'm in the same boat, my amp is in the basement directly under the speakers. The set up is like this: I drilled a hole in the floor behind my rack where my preamp and source components live and dropped my 30' long Goertz Micropurl balanced interconnects down into the basement. I drilled holes in the 2x8 stringers in the basement ceiling and ran the interconnect to my BAT VK500 amp. My amp sits on a VERY sturdy homemade stand I built, directly below and between the speakers. Drilled holes in the floor behind my speakers and ran 10' runs of Transparent MusicWave Bi-Wire speaker cables (spades) from the amp up through the floor and attached to the binding posts on the speakers. In this set up, keep the speaker wires short, and use longer interconnects from preamp to amp. I never turn my amp off so it's not a problem for me, and obviously there's no equipment or wire clutter. Passes the WAF test with flying colours. |
Tough spot you're in. Try & get your wife involved with listening to the music, even if it's something you don't care for. This could serve as a segue so you can explain how the positioning of the amps will contribute to a more musically sounding system & you would really like her blessings regarding this because you love her & when you play certain songs it reminds you how you guys got together, how you feel about her now, etc. etc.
If that doesn't work you could try for a compromise regarding something she wants to do, whatever that is.
Good luck. |
Put the amps on tall stands in the basement under the speakers.
Why would she want hide those amps, they are so beeyooteeful! |
