I've been with my wife(ish) for almost 5 and a half years now. That whole time she hasn't really cared much for the audio world and has more often than not been disgusted with the amount I've spent on it.
Over the last year or so I've had an LCD 2.2, HD800, and SR-009. She didn't care about the LCD 2 much at all and at that point I'd pretty much given up. When I decided to get the HD800 she just reacted like... "Another one?", but once she tried the HD800 she was dancing around (within reason) and said that she liked those a lot better than the LCD 2.
When I auditioned the SR-009 + LL system she said those were obviously better, but nearly wanted to destroy me when I told her I wanted it. I explained the whole 'When you hear better there's no going back' idea and she somewhat understood. Then I broke it down math wise and realized it would only cost about 2.5k over what I already had invested if I sold some extra stuff (my second Mac, for instance).
Again, I'd still pretty much given up here...but after a few months worth of listening to the spill from the 009s, and building ourselves a very nice (and growing) LP collection she has decided that we need speakers. "I'm sick of hearing you hear your music and I want to hear it, too." So she is the driving force behind saving and selling a bit once again to get some nice speakers. She went to audition them with me and her favorite (as well as mine) were the Harbeth HL-5.
While she still claims to not hear difference between amps, turntables, etc I think she hears more than she's letting on. We're going to go audition amps soon for the Harbeths and I have a feeling I'll get a choice out of her (it could be because she hates the gold panels on the Leben gear, but we'll see
).
I've found that the key is almost forcing them to sit down and listen to new stuff you get (mainly things that make a major change like new headphones) until you find that thing that makes them finally 'get it'. Once you do that, it seems (in my case at least) that they hit that downward spiral we all know about as well.
----
tl;dr - My wife(ish) has decided that we need new speakers because she's sick of listening to my open headphones. She knows we don't half ass anything audio related in this house, so we're going all out. Goodbye tax returns!
