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How do you stop house guest from damaging your speakers?

Over the years I have had many adult guest coming to my house and curious about my speakers though I never mention to them I’m an audiophile. Most of the time they will lean close to the speaker, looking at the driver, maybe occasionally touching the cabinet or knocking on the cabinet. But in other times I’ve had guest touching drivers gently as well and I usually just tell them to stop to prevent them from damaging the driver when I see them doing that.

Yesterday I had a little sit down with a few guests and one of them wanted to play my Blade 2. Out of nowhere, while the music is playing he stood up and walked to the speaker and knocked on the side driver woofer and asked “are these speakers too?” It was probably 3 or 4 consecutive hard knock on the woofer while the woofer is playing, and you guys can already imagine my facial expression. I don’t want to blame the guest as the blade’s woofer doesn’t look like regular woofer and I can’t expect guests to have knowledge of how not to damage speakers, but man, that really hurts when I saw that happen.

I inspected the driver afterward and it seems like all is good and the driver survived. I don’t remember if I heard distortion while the music is playing but to my knowledge this would easily fall into the abuse category for an audiophile.

I’m wondering, do I attach a label to say do not touch on those drivers? Do I tell guests not to physically touch the speakers? 

bwang29
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 

@mapman  +1

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,114 posts
 

I can imagine that unexpected knock on a driver also knocked all the air out of your lungs. Glad to hear all is well.

Funny story…I had B&W N803 years ago and I lost count of how many people made attempts to pick up the “microphone” on top of the speakers. I learned quickly there’s no shame in politely asking people not to touch anything.

If you have an option not to let anyone into your listening space, exercise it. Otherwise just let them know it’s ok to look but not ok to touch. There’s just no upside in demoing your gear to someone who doesn’t generally care about high end audio.

ewingfox
5 posts
 

We have a lot of people in and out of our house and I host parties quite often. I system isn't nearly as expensive as a lot of folks on here have - My primary listening setup is worth around 20 grand but I have some pretty expensive exposed tubes. One guests come into the room, I always mention to them to not touch the system.  When there are kids, I usually keep everybody out of the room unless I know the adult is in charge of their child.  90% of the time - I have the speaker grills on to protect the drivers anyway.

treynolds155
184 posts
 

And then there's the guest that grabs the remote and turns the volume up to the point of doing damage to the speakers. 

ftrot
15 posts
 

I understand perfectly your feeling the other night I had a dinner at home and my friends wanted to know my music room. It didn't happen with the speakers but with the turntable. He just saw the turntable and started using it like a disc jockey spinning the turntable trying to be funny. I wanted to strangle him. Conclusion, the music room was limited to two couples, prior induction of how delicate the equipment is and with the friendly warning not to touch anything at all.

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