So you think you want an audiophile wife?

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But if you do, you will have to be up for stuff like:

1. She just will not be happy until you have her favorite $140K amplifier. Then the speakers that do it justice, of course. And, since you want these things too, you just might as well throw any kind of restraint out the front door. This is no longer a place where common sense is welcome.

2. She insists on playing her music too loud and your music not loud enough

3. She makes you move and twirl very heavy very delicate very expensive gear – this is no job for someone who is not extremely fit and willing to sacrifice major body parts in the pursuit of “Let’s try this. No, wait. That.” Wait for it… wait for… it… “No, let’s try this again”

4. Someone who as often as not will be hogging the sweet spot [ever try to fit two people into one sweet spot? Oops. that is a point for the next section]

5. Someone who will go on and on about the poor sound quality of your priceless, PRICELESS bootlegs while she listens to singers who could not find middle ‘C’ if, if, no matter how hard they try, over several decades of effort.

So, an audiophile wife? Really?

But, in the interest of full disclosure *sigh* there are one or two good things one might enjoy about an audiophile wife:

1. She will change the cables while you space out thinking about who knows what. This makes for fuss free, hands off, shoot outs. Oh, and try not to tell her to ‘hurry up’ too many times during a single listening session.

2. She will talk to you about audio. Over breakfast. Lunch. At 3 in the morning [which can be not so good if you are trying to sleep, but if that is the case you can just use one of the commonly known 64,000 ways of quickly ending a conversation with a spouse. That usually works fine. But be sure you remember to DUCK!]

3. She won’t complain about you spending money on audio. Unless she thinks it is something that sucks then OMG you will NEVER hear the end of it, and OMG you must not love her very much if you thought it OK to subject her to listening to THAT POS in HER listeningroom. Oh, and start practicing your DUCK!ing skills.

4. She looks WAY better than all your audiophile mates. I personally see no downside to this. It is, admittedly, a pretty low bar.

5. She will share that ‘rush’ with you when, making a change to the system, things sound WAY better than it ever has before. Sharing this with someone really close to you… kind of hard to beat.

6. [yes, there was a 6. :-)]

Yeah. Hmmmmm…. OK. Guess I’m keeping her.

The Sound of Silence

During the Boulder Flood, after about two days, it would actually, believe it or not, stop raining once in awhile.

At these times it was extremely foggy, even at night [so no starlight, moonlight or city lights], there was no electricity [so no lights, no refrigerator compressor or furnace fan, etc.].

We were stuck for several nights in what was a big expensive, soggy, sensory deprivation chamber in the middle of nowhereswille [formerly Boulder, CO].

With many hours to contemplate, well, to contemplate just about everything one could contemplate, the alternative being Death By Boredom. There was just nothing else to do [neli likes the dark and silence and sleeps like a baby under these conditions, notwithstanding any protests she may voice to the contrary. :-)].

So, I asked myself “what do I hear?”. What does complete silence sound like?

I heard my breathing and my heartbeat, of course.

I also heard a tape hiss-like noise. An ever present white noise. I finally figured out that it was like holding a conch seashell up to one’s ear. That this must be the sound of blood pumping through or nearby the ear. There typically isn’t a seashell to reflect this noise back to the ear, as we go about our business in the world, so this noise is a lot more quiet and fairly easy to ignore most of the time.

I also heard a high-pitched whine. No, this wasn’t me wanting the electricity to go back on so I could find out what was going on out there, to see if Boulder was really still there. This is not, I do not think, tinnitus – which I get from time to time, and which, for me, is much louder and at a somewhat lower frequency. My guess is that this is the sound of the gears in my brain, and that they are running a little bit low on oil, grinding against each other enough to make this whining / squealing type noise. Or perhaps not.

And there are of course noises when one swallows. And chewing noises are, of course, one of the loudest things we ever hear. And there is sniffing, jawbone clicking/TMJ, bone joints popping, the tongue rubbing against the teeth, and probably other, even more disgusting and yet still in the end quite noisy stuff.

Considering how LOUD the sound of silence is, it is a wonder we can ever hear anything else. Like, you know, music. šŸ˜‰