Monitors are falling

Slingshot, I feel for you Bro. While I am not one of the married brotherhood, I have a friend with a wife and a three year old son who's gone through exactly what you're about to experience.

He started assembling a home theater system about two years ago and had to address the appearance [wife acceptance] factor and all the child safety issues. His DVD player, AV receiver and TV are all centrally located behind the doors of a large media cabinet. The cabinet has bookshelves on both sides of the TV section so he can put his two front main and center channel speakers high up, and out of reach of his little boy. His surrounds are wall mounted. The only piece exposed is the subwoofer, which his son just loves to jump up and down on.

Initially, he purchased a unit from IKEA, but returned it because build quality and sturdiness were sub par. He eventually settled on a nicer system from a department store. Something that looks more like traditional living room furniture, which rates high on the wife acceptance scale.

I realize a bookcase is not the best acoustic environment for monitors. I have mine wall mounted for home theater using Target wall brackets. If your child were able to tip over a large floor standing speaker, that could potentially be worse than knocking over monitors on stands.

You may have to sacrifice sonics for safety. Hopefully for your sake, other forum members will be able to offer better solutions than I have.

Good luck.

When our son was born, my wife made me sell my beloved Dynaudio Confidence 5s to get something more stable. I now had another criteria to add to my auditions: Stability. Fortunately, although a little higher priced, the Talon Khoruses fit the bill sonically and physically. The extra $$ were an easy sell once she saw how stable they were.

Slingshot, might it be time for an upgrade???

Find a way to bolt your stands to the floor (most stands should be easy to retrofit to suit this need). Speakers could be bolted or screwed to the stands, though the clay like stuff that I use (4 peas sized balls) makes it very difficult to remove the speakers from the stands (it takes a great deal of strength and twisting to remove them). I have Target (think that they are HR) stands which are filled with sand and lead and my wife has walked right into one of them without knocking it over, though with small childred I would again bolt (or screw) them to the floor. Spikes could still be used and the bolts or screws would just draw the spikes into the floor as much as is needed. I do not know how this would effect the sound, but it should still be better than other options.

My friend the father of two has a pair of speakers with all sorts dimples in his woofers. I suspect the tipping isn't the only problem your going to have in 2-3 years. Maybe wall mounting is something you should consider. On a more important note: congratulations to you and your wife on your good fortune.