Family & Audio Equip.

[wayner86]

How many people here allow family members to tinker with their gear? I for one will never allow someone in my family to even breath the same air as my audio setup. I don't have a overly amazing system, but im proud of it and i worked damn hard to put it together. My problem doesn't lie with letting my kin listen to my stuff but......My brother who is 4 years older than me had an excellent idea so he played with my receiver while i was at school(college) and messed up my calibration somehow (hence my post in the Home Theatre section), not only that....when i got everything fixed he turned up my sub's volume and i swear when i cranked the tunes the other day it sounded like my sub split the cabinet in two, to top it all off the jerk was in my room yesterday and decided he'd like to know what the highest volume setting was on my receiver so he cranked it until the setting didn't go any higher and my studio 20's made this real pleasant popping sound. So the meathead made my sub and speakers clip within a month of me owning the stuff. Everything sounds fine so i pray he didn't do any permanent damage. Next time he gets a brilliant idea i swear im doing 25 to life.

Anyone else with a pleasant tale such as this?

Wayne

p.s. I'll ask this here to avoid starting a new thread, when speakers clip is there always damage done? i've put my ear up to my speakers and they sound fine but could there be underlying damage? or if they sound fine are they ok?

[topspeed]

Interesting topic.

As a general rule, I try not to let my kids touch either my rig or my cars. My poor wife simply has no clue how to operate the HT so she doesn't even try. A universal remote with macros helped on that front but even now my 6 yr old can operate it better than my wife.:rolleyes:

The worst that has happened to my gear is my speakers getting knocked over into my armoire by our former housekeeper. The speaker's top corner had a piece taken out of it and the back was scratched pretty well. The cabinets are solid wood so I had a friend who is a furniture guru come over and repair them, but you can only do so much. The worst part was she didn't even leave me a note to tell me she damaged the speaker. I had to notice the speaker was out of position that night! Now, I simply tell the current housekeeper to leave all of my gear alone and I'll polish it myself.

[dean_martin]

Generally, there are two schools of thought on this subject when it comes up. One is "keep off the gear". The other is it's for the whole family, it brings us closer together, it's something we can do together, they appreciate my interests more, blah, blah, blah and more sickly sweet crap like that. My approach is I put one system together in the family room for all to use. If you break it, I ain't replacin' it. You can work it off or fork over the cash. Also, each of my boys has his own stereo w/dvdp in his room made up of hand-me-down equipment and stuff they chipped in for.

It doesn't take much for me to know when someone's been screwin' with my main 2-ch rig. Teenagers aren't that smart when it comes to covering their tracks. It's very rare that they mess with my stereo. The only time I worry is when they have a bunch of friends over. However, I came home one time and all my cables were gone. Everything was disconnected except the turntable. I still don't quite understand what the li'l knucklehead needed with my cables.

I think you're in a tougher position being the younger brother. I was the oldest and I could always threaten the li'l bro with physical harm if he set foot in my room. It worked except when mom or dad heard me. Watch a movie called "Weird Science". It might make you feel better about the older brother situation.

[KaiWinters]

My wife could care less and only uses the Harmony remote...Thank God for Harmony's "one touch" buttons or my system would be a tv and its' speakers.
My son has a htib and a 36" crt tv in the family room. He too prefers to just turn it on and use it.
I am the tweaker, there I said it and embrace the fact...whew I feel better now.

[kexodusc]

I tell my wife there's nothing she can do to my gear just by pressing buttons that playing music that can't be "undone".
As long as she doesn't physically damage a speaker like poor Topspeed's experience or take a hammer to an amp or something, I can't imagine what she could do.
She'd never crank the music so bleeding loud that a woofer would bottom out or anything, so I don't have to worry there.

Truth be told, I wish she'd use my audio gear a bit more, maybe get a better appreciation for it. Not likely though, she just thinks I'm nuts.

[GMichael]

Wifey loves the music. I showed her how to switch the receiver to cable and she already knows how to change the TV channels to her favorite "soft rock" channel. She never plays it loud enough to do any damage. No kids to worry about.

[JohnMichael]

When I still lived at home some remodeling was being done in the upstairs bathroom and my bedroom. I moved my stereo downstairs during the remodel and slept in the living room. One day I came home and the men working had my stereo cranked so they could hear it upstairs. They were surprised I was home and judging by the red in my face and the insane look of anger in my eyes it was never touched by them again and I did not have to say a thing.

These days I let my partner use the stereo. I do discourage the use of the turntable. Of course there was an hour training period and talk of my expectations about its care. All not needed but I could not help myself.

[L.J.]

Not much for to worry about. It's just my wife and 2 kids(7y & 5m). If anything, I'm worried about a bookshelf in my bedroom getting knocked over when the little guy starts walking around. Been looking for Blu-Tac with no luck but I still gotta few months. Besides that there's no threat. My wife only knows how to turn music on and hasn't even tried to figure out a movie. Same with my 7 year old, he's mastered getting the playstation up and running and that's about it.

Now if I came home one day and the wife had the SPL meter out and test tones going, or perhaps my sub is sitting on the other side of the room because of improved bass response, well that's when I'll know I married the right women. Until then she pretty much thinks I'm crazy and laughs every time she sees me pull out the SPL.

My biggest concern is my Denon remote getting crushed in the recliner on accident. This has happened to a few remotes already in the past.

[topspeed]

Hey L.J.,

You can get some Elmer's removeable tack puddy at Home Depot. It's orange and it works just like BluTak, except it won't damage the cabinetry like BluTak can if you try to just pull it off instead of twist it off.

http://www.elmers.com/product/product_page.asp?pCode=E625

[L.J.]

Hey L.J.,

You can get some Elmer's removeable tack puddy at Home Depot. It's orange and it works just like BluTak, except it won't damage the cabinetry like BluTak can if you try to just pull it off instead of twist it off.

http://www.elmers.com/product/product_page.asp?pCode=E625

Cool!! Thanks Topspeed :thumbsup:

[PAT.P]

Dont care if wife use my main system ,dont care if she crank-it as loud as she want it.I do mine when she skip a song at loud level:incazzato: My 8 year old son knows better than her ,that why he as is own system in the spare room.In the basement it they could use the system but hands off the 31 band stereo EQ (it set for what I want to hear).:ihih:

[Geoffcin]

How many people here allow family members to tinker with their gear?

p.s. I'll ask this here to avoid starting a new thread, when speakers clip is there always damage done? i've put my ear up to my speakers and they sound fine but could there be underlying damage? or if they sound fine are they ok?

Everyone is required to learn how to work EVERY piece of equipment. My kids use my HT system for the Xbox/Playstation/Gamcube, everyone uses my stereo for music, they all know how to burn CD's, ect, ect. NOBODY is the sole master of anything in my house. (although when I'm home I'm alpha male)

Oh, my wife drives can a manual transmission car too. I'l teach my kids as soon as they are old enough.

p.s. Please open a new thread for any questions you may have about your speakers/damage. It's much better that way.

[Glen B]

No one touches my high-end 2-channel system. The HT system they are allowed to operate, to watch movies and listen to music.

[shokhead]

They know how to use it,they also know not to get into the menu so never a problem.

[Florian]

My friend Klaus can touch my system and well, that was is. Noone else touches it, vacuums near it. But people tend to not think about speakers when they see them so its ok.

-Flo

[GMichael]

My friend Klaus can touch my system and well, that was is. Noone else touches it, vacuums near it. But people tend to not think about speakers when they see them so its ok.

-Flo

We all know that you just have all the controls mounted on your ceiling so that only you can reach them.

[nightflier]

Well this should be a good place to post this. Back when we rented out a room, I noticed one day that my cables were different. Speaker cables, IC's, everything. I wasn't into very fancy equipment or cables back then, but like any suckered BB/GG customer I had Monster cable all around and now all I saw was generic stuff. It turned out that the boyfriend of the girl who was renting the room from us had sold the cables to a "friend" and thought I wouldn't notice. The rent that month was twice as much... and she moved out the next.

Ironically, I was strapped for cash, and so I could not afford to replace them with new Monster cables so I started experimenting with DIY cables and mom & pop brands. For better or worse, it was how I got started in this hobby...

[superpanavision70mm]

Family Vs. Gear (round 1)

I think that the preferred setup is the one that alot of people on here choose and that is to have a room that is setup and is all theirs to do whatever they wish. This enables the person to have full control and protection over their stuff, while the other rooms of the place can be available to everyone. However, some of us are not fortunate enough to have the ability to designate our own listening room, thus we must negotiate things we don't really wish we had to. For those that are married I think we all can echo in together that our significant other typically does not know or want to know how to work all the controls and we don't really want them to either. However, sometimes it can be fun sharing our passions together. I am lucky...my wife enjoys the things that I enjoy and I talk with her about all the gear and she is aware of how it all works. I am not worried about her using the stuff and I have it somewhat 'dummy' proof so that she can't destroy anything. I don't really let others touch my stuff, but I am willing to give them information regarding it because often people want to know what does what. As for those that have kids...well, I am not at that point in my life yet, but I know one day it will most likely happen and so I guess I will have to plan some way to keep the kid(s) away until they are old enough to know better.

Wouldn't it be cool if they made passwords so that no one can access your amps, receivers, players, etc unless they have the password?

[Pat D]

I suppose this depends on the level of knowledge and on maturity. Fortunately, my wife doesn't try to reconfigure the main system. She knows how to work the CDP, the tuner, the tape deck, even the turntable; how to do the switching on the preamp and which buttons to push and not to push; and she knows not to play too, too loud (actually, around 85 dBa seems to be plenty for her--that's pretty loud, really).

As for the simple HT system, she can operate the TV, play videos and DVDs, put on the CBC FM, and so on. The kids who visit (age 10 and 12) know how to play DVDs, too. They don't operate the main music system and don't seem to care about sound quality, impact, and such things.

So, I'm not worried about either system.

[pshuttle]

Happily my partner loves my hi-fi almost as much as I do - I often find her listening to it curled up on the sofa when I am back home late.

Pete

[GMichael]

Well this should be a good place to post this. Back when we rented out a room, I noticed one day that my cables were different. Speaker cables, IC's, everything. I wasn't into very fancy equipment or cables back then, but like any suckered BB/GG customer I had Monster cable all around and now all I saw was generic stuff. It turned out that the boyfriend of the girl who was renting the room from us had sold the cables to a "friend" and thought I wouldn't notice. The rent that month was twice as much... and she moved out the next.

Ironically, I was strapped for cash, and so I could not afford to replace them with new Monster cables so I started experimenting with DIY cables and mom & pop brands. For better or worse, it was how I got started in this hobby...

No kidding? Man, I would have thought that I walked into a Twilight Zone episode. There are cameras on me right? This is a trick to see if I'll flip out and go postal?
Some people have more nerve than brains. Did you wait to calm down before you talked to them? Did you ever see the guy again?

[nightflier]

GM,

Well my anger grew slowly. At first I thought that it was something I might have done a while back and forgotten. Then I thought maybe my wife was angry at me (in situations like this, all sorts of ideas come to your mind). Finally I thought maybe my brother who is over every once in a while was playing a joke. Finally I asked the young lady who was living with us and she denied everything at first, but seemed to know something. She was an exchange student who didn't speak English too well, so you can't really start yelling about hell & damnation right away.

She eventually broke down and told us that she had seen her boyfriend do "something" behind the rack. I threatened to file a police report and call the school she was attending (they were the ones who referred her). My wife was there as well so that helped difuse things a bit. We eventually reached an agreement that she would pay us back.

I never saw her boyfriend at our house again, though. I really wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but never got the chance. Things were very unpleasant from that moment on so she moved out soon after. But over the years, I've learned that strange things can happen to things we covet too much. I've had my TV thrown out the window (frat-boy dumb-a**), my records tossed like frisbees (angry girlfriend - they don't fly too well, fortunately), lost a pair of tower speakers (the moving co. denied any wrong-doing), and I once found my computer sitting on the lawn with the sprinklers on (graduating with honors when living with flunkies). The moral: don't let people close to you know how much you really love your gear.

One low-maintenance solution I can give for family & nosy guests: let them play with the $300 receiver with all the functions, buttons, dials, and led's, and they won't want to mess with that $3K preamp that only has selection and volume controls. I'll second that for most amps (one button, oftent on the rear), large tower speakers (they're not tiny, shiny, or iPod-like), fancy CD players (manually opening door is too much work), phono preamp (what's that?), and TT (you still listen to records?).

[wayner86]

Perhaps one day, some of you will come home to your kids and their friends having a DJ Scratch competition on your turntables, im sure that would make things interesting :P

[nightflier]

Perhaps one day, some of you will come home to your kids and their friends having a DJ Scratch competition on your turntables, im sure that would make things interesting :P

15 years later, the headline in the local paper reads:

Father finally releases children from what authorities describe as "The longest grounding in history."

Wendy Knowsnada reporting, on MicrosIBMacle Aircast:

Apparently they were gounded after scratching on a "record player." We checked with historian David Shmutz to explain what that is: "Well Wendy, a record player, also known as a turntable, or TT as those in-the-know liked to call it, was used decades ago to extract an analog music signal from a groove in a spinning disk, long before digital infotainment. It was a rather cumbersome, expensive, and hard-to-configure process - if it had not been for the advent of Digital On-demand Subscription service, or DOS, and the final demise of HDBluRay, we'd still be spinning disks of some kind... As I was saying, the kids - well they aren't kids anymore, are they? - were manually moving the spinning disk so as to create a "scratching" sound along with the beat. This was a common practice with street kids and at dance clubs several decades before. So as you see Wendy, these wicked miscreants were destroying some pretty delicate antique analog gear." "OK, if you say so, Dr. Shmutz, Thank you. Were would we be without at least one historian here on the West coast (your tax-dollars at work)? So if you're still with us, folks (and I know all that academic mumbo-jumbo can be fatiguing), the kids were apparently destroying some useless antique music gear. Some say that Oprah may want to have the family on her aircast (well, I don't know if her marriage with Dr. Phil will survive another season). Anyhow, we asked David Bland, a neighbor, who didn't understand what all this was about to tell us what he thought: "Well, Wendy, they were grounded 15 years for scratching, that's pretty harsh. I scratched myself all the time when I was a kid, and nobody ever grounded me for that." "Well, there you have it. Thank you Mr. Bland... Folks, everyone of you should do the same: stop thinking so much and just go on about your life and let the good folks in Washington.com worry about everything else. This is Wendy for MicrosIBMacle. Good night."

[CWM7128@AOL.COM]

I have a thory about people in a family who have things that are " theirs"
For arguments sake lets assume all issues off safety and traiing children about personal property are not germaine to this. I am talking about a husband or a partner in a relationship, having his things, be it a 500,000 system or a satelite dish in front of the double wide. If you share your life with your family you have no right to have anything offl limts besides your personal space. And your personal space doesn't sit in the middle of a room or take up an undue amount of the family budget or time . But what do I know.

[emaidel]

When I first moved in with my fiance, my two soon-to-be stepsons (aged 17 and 19) were thrilled that "Ed's Stereo" was coming in along with me. I had told them that they could use it in my absence, provided they handled the equipment, my CD's and my records with the same care that I did. Yeah, right....

Fortunately, I had a system that consisted of a preamp, two power amps (one for the main speakers, and the other for the sub), a tuner, a CD player, a cassette deck, a reel-to-reel deck, and a turntable. This wasn't too difficult for my stepsons to figure out how to use, but I also had a complete stack of dbx sound processing equipment: a dynamic range expander; an EQ; a subharmonic frequency synthesizer and a powered signal router to connect all this stuff. All of this "stuff" was so confusing to my stepsons, that they simply could never figure out how to even turn the system on, so they left it alone. And, I never made any attempt to explain the system's operation to them either.

My stepchildren are now grown and out on their own, so that's no longer a concern. My wife loves to listen to my system just as much as I do, but hasn't a clue as to how to operate it, and doesn't want to know either, so the one and only person who handles it is me. And I don't for a minute think I'm being selfish in any way.