Why do almost all women today hate home audio?

This is a little offbeat, but I actually started dating my wife as a result of an audio connection. We had met in Brooklyn Heights decades ago, when both of us lived there. After a couple of different nights out, she visited my apartment, walked in and said "oh Quads.' (I had a pair of the original ESLs running at the time). I said "how could you know that?" Turns out she worked part-time as a grad student as an assistant to a pretty famous NYC photographer who was a well-known audiophile. A guy who I only knew by name and reputation-Chuck Lamonica. 

I asked her whether she could introduce me. She did and we got on famously. Chuck was one of those guys everybody loved- full of soul, forgot more than most ever knew about hi-fi. He and I would spend hours listening while Liz hung out with his wife, Elsa (who only recently passed away; Elsa was Morris Levy's receptionist at one point as a young woman). Anyway, a great couple who we both loved. Chuck died young of a heart-attack-in 1991. Elsa passed only last year, but Liz stayed in constant touch with the family. 

So, in a sense, hi-fi was a bond that helped cement our relationship. Liz is pretty ambivalent about gear- she'll allow me the opportunity to explain stuff-- not just about the stereo systems, but the broader history of reproduced sound, the business and popular culture, something that I spend a fair amount of time on as a retired copyright lawyer who teaches and is interested in archival matters. She's happy to join in listening sessions, but really isn't a gear head. That's ok. One of us is enough. She's got plenty of interests beyond that--and occasionally has one of her friends over--to listen to the big system. 

I hate generalizations, but it may be that women are more interested in the end result- the music-- than how we get there. She wants a small, press and play system for the kitchen/dining room. I asked her how she felt about 300b tubes and she looked at me like, "man you are such a dork." 

We are. Dorks. :)

@tylermunns- I generally don't get into the substance of active cases here but I think the Led Zep case helped push back some of Blurred Lines. A friend's firm handled the Sheeran case.  I'm occasionally pulled in to cases as an expert on U.S. law or music business practices. I do teach (at UT Law in Austin) but I'm also thinking of going back to school for archival preservation and library science--there's a preservation side and also a more analytical side (think: AI interfaces). I've been spending as much time on the history as on the advances if that makes any sense. Thanks for asking. 

Bill

@tylermunns--There is so much I'm interested in; audio preservation and digital standards, film preservation and ephemera; I just finished helping out somebody at UCLA on the history of music for early TV; the law stuff gives me certain advantages only because I did a lot of historic due diligence on big music catalogs, early photography, ancient manuscripts, pulp magazines, film, etc. One area that fascinates is the taxonomies for AI-- aside from the legal issues of "ingestion."

The audio archivists are very much like audiophile historian/archeologists. I did a piece some years ago about visiting the Packard Campus in Culpeper, which is the intake facility of the Library of Congress. Those guys had dream jobs--we sat in with an engineer who was reconstructing the Les Paul overdubs made direct to disc (before Les had access to a tape machine). He'd cut a track on a homemade lathe, then play it back on a phonograph while playing an overdub on a fresh lacquer. This stuff was eventually released commercially as two songs, but the discs to make them filled 1/2 a library cart. The engineer was figuring out which disc came before another. Of course, they had all the cool toys, as well as a sort of museum of stuff from the beginning of recorded sound. 

I guess this would complement what I did as a lawyer- but I stopped the actual practice of law, as such. (Still keep my license active in NY but what I would be doing is expert work or consulting, but not acting as a legal beagle as such). We'll see.....

Thanks for asking.