Experiences with your "Better Halves"


MY girlfriend and I recently went to an audio store just to burn some time before dinner with friends. We played some of our salsa and R&B CDs in a musical fidelity (Nuvista amp+ some other MF components) with B&W CDM9 speakers. When the store manager asked for our opinion she stated "the highs are a little rough, separation was superb, imaging was good, the bass was very clear although a bit forward probably because of the room" - and this was all in one breath. Needless to say I was impressed!! She had only listened to my rambles after listening sessions at friends and audio stores. It is apparent that she has very gifted hearing ability even though power ratings, capacitance or impedance matching are the equivalent of words found in a Russian Restaurant menu to her. I am interested in learning about your experiences as couples, this has certainly been quite an awakening to me.
salsero
most any woman can hear better so this comes as no surprise. Congratulations; you definitely have an audiophile girlfriend there so you'd better get her to the jewlers asap; that one is a keeper for sure.
My own situation is quite similar: she can pick out & accurately charactarize most any change that I've made to the rig, often without even being told that a change was made. She's truly a great "blind auditioner". Sal you're in good company there.
My wife is the same way too, it's great to have neutral opinion handy. She doen't care one iota about any of the tech-terms or science (and pseudo-science...) behind this madness. But she will tell me if she thinks it sounds better or not.

It was her remarks that got me going down this audio path again.

some highlights:

She noticed a change in the sound for the better, and all I'd done was change speaker cables. She had no idea I'd done anyhting. Before I had made the change, she said it sound as if it was 'struggling.' We'd moved into a new house few months before and I had the 'better' cables pacdked away and had not bothered to change them.

She noticed when I changed a PC (at the time, I doubted that PC's made any difference, and was ready to put off what I'd heard as self-fulfilling pyschosis), as well as when I changed a digital IC ('hey, that sounds smoother').

She also picked up on what turned out to be a fuse going bad inside one of our amps two days before it became so clear even I noticed it...

KP
My wife can hear anything abnormal/wrong @ much lower volume levels than I (especially in the HF's). She also loves music as much as I, but unfortunately after burning herself on a 300B tube (and damaging the tube in the process) she has not been using the system herself very much (even though I sold this particular amp a few months ago and have the other tube pieces out of the way). I am sorry that she burned herself (the power switch was on the back of the amp), but the tube was no big deal and she knows this (I sold the amp with two good sets of spare output tubes). Anyway, I think that I will again reconfigure the setup to make it even more user friendly and see if this works. On a funny side note she just discovered yesterday that her psychiatrist is an audiophile. I don't know how it came up in the session, but the conversation drifted toward questions about our gear. I think that I will tag along to the next session. LOL.
Women hear better, listen better, and that is why for the most part they are not interested in our hobby of "toy" collecting. Don't shoot this is just my humble opinion.