Need help for wife acceptance

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.

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

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

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

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.