What would you do differently?

Well, I guess there IS an advantage of being single after all! :-) I own 5 sets of speakers, 5 CD players, 14 turntables, 7 power amps, well, you get the point. I also have a dedicated room with zillion $$ outlets, 1,000s of LPs and CDs, nothing but audio gear as furniture and I play it LOUD whenever I want! But, then again, you have somebody in bed next to you at night (although this may not ALWAYS be a good thing - particularly if you have too many speakers on a given day!! LOL!) whereas I only have a cat - well, again, this may not be a bad thing.

I agree though, if I were married with all of this stuff, I'd probably have been served with divorce papers or be a lot poorer from having to equalize purchases all these years!!

Hooray for bachelorhood!!!!

Let me see, what do I wanna buy next!!

Hi, I'm a woman and I'm single and so I have done and can do whatever I like w/my house and systems and experimenting etc. Though I do take a LOT of flack from significant others, family, and friends with a sharp enough eye or attention span that they can tell when something in one of my two listening rooms is "different" or new. I once made the mistake of telling one of my dearest friends, Joanne, the cost of these Transparent Ultra speaker cables I had just purchased for, I think it was, $2000 back then. She was absolutely flabbergasted and started talking about how much food that would buy for a poor family in China . . . And she's the one who kept asking and asking "how much?" I learned my lesson and now NEVER disclose prices, only that I traded for something, or bought it used, or as a demo from my dealer. Anyway, because I answer to no one I have two excellent systems (both are in the Virtual Systems on this site, one as "My first tube system" and the other as "Small (?) system for living room." I put these together after a LOT of trial and error, including boxing and shipping off mega-heavy Vienna Acoustics Beethovens that I traded for an ARC integrated amp and Proac Response 1SC's. A few years ago I also sold my B&W 801 Matrixes bolted onto Sound Anchor stands, but the buyer came to my house and picked them up so I didn't have to break my back moving them thank heavens. I have had more UPS and Fed Ex boxes coming and going out of my townhouse than a small business. My neighbors think I am running a small business--and maybe my hobby and my desire to try new gear and perfect what I've settled on DO constitute a small business! A constant financial drain of a business, but as time consuming as any job. Also, I have boxed and shipped and received at my door tons of different very heavy power amps, including the Goldmund Mimesis 29 that I bought new from my dealer then had to ship back to Switzerland twice for repairs and then finally to Colorado when I sold it. Lately, I've received and then sold again my Ayre V3, and received and kept Acurus 5x125 and Act 3 processor, and received and kept ARC VT 100 Mk III and ARC CA-50 integrated. If I were married, my husband would probably be thrilled w/all this activity, unlike your wife. My male cousin Paul thinks some guy would marry me SOLELY for the audio gear in my house. He is awed whenever he visits from New Mexico!
I spend a lot of time in these forums and on this site because I have so few to share my passion and insanity with. I am always so relieved and gratified when I hear from all the rest of you, young and old (though almost all male, for some reason), who mirror my views, habits, and quest for good sound.
Hope you can continue your experiments, even w/speakers,
Sarah

Good thread Kirk. I enjoyed reading both the above posts, especially Sarah's-- thanks for sharing your experiences.

I'm married and have "my own" semi-dedicated listening room in which I make all the decisions, and I consider myself lucky in this regard. But WAF prevents me from getting into HT to the extent I'd like. I do have a widescreen TV and DVD player, and can pipe the sound through a good outboard pre-amp/amp/speaker system, but my wife will seldom let me play this system at realistic levels and so I watch many movies with headphones, and I do not have surround speakers-- no point in it as wife refuses to listen to bomb blasts, shooting etc. I like a broad range of movies, and occassionally she will join me in a good Drama. But she is so used to listening to the compressed sound of regular TV and radio, that the dynamics of good quality DVDs bug the hell out of her, and she refuses to tolerate a WIDE dynamic audio range.

So, what would I do differently if not constrained by WAF? I'd have a full blown HT system, a second very good stereo system in the living room, and when the mood stuck me I'd play ZZ Top at "disturbing the peace" levels. Still, on balance, I wouldn't like living alone, and I feel that we've made good compromises under the circumstances. We each have our "own space", and I hardly feel deprived. Cheers. Craig