June 2004 Editorial

Women, cars and...HiFi

Author: Lucio Cadeddu
Published: June, 2004

Just for once, let me digress a little bit. This editorial is still devoted to HiFi but I need a "different" off-topic introduction. You should be aware of the fact that, besides HiFi, I'm very fond of other ...eerr...things :-)
Women [ahem...!] and sport cars (and bikes). Now, before you start typing a kind letter to my wife letting her know her husband's bad attitude, let me explain.
When I write "women" I refer to one woman in particular: my lovely daughter Silvia, slightly more than 2 years old and already in love with fast and red cars.
The pic at your right shows her near my "speeding red" Coupé (..."a red hot love at a red stoplight").
Instead of listening to my friends' advices and buying a monovan or a big diesel-powered station wagon I still use this 220 bhp monster as family transportation vehicle. Call me radical, if you wish.
Hence, it seems POSSIBLE to find an agreement between (little) women and (fast) cars. The fancy thing about women is that they seem to prefer sport cars when still _not_ married and then change their mind one minute after the first slice of the wedding cake ;-)
Big, ugly, diesel-powered station wagons, monovans or SUVs seem the best thing since sliced bread. It doesn't really matter whether you have no kids, 1 kid or 10 kids. You need a "large" and possibly sloooow car that steers like a pig :-)
C'mon, dudes, this can't be serious.

This funny attitude lead me to write down a long article against the station-wagonesque mania and to offer it to the Italian leading automotive magazine, Quattroruote. This is, by far, the most popular car mag in Italy.
Surprisingly, they published the article on a special issue devoted to sport cars, titled "Dossier Sportive", at the Italian newsstands right now in mid June. Have a look at the mag cover here at your left.

This brief off-topic introduction allows me to talk you about another topic, quite relevant for any family-oriented audiophile: make your HiFi survive despite your children's attacks.
Perhaps I've been lucky but my HiFi systems (and my quite large vintage HiFi collection) is still intact after almost 3 years of continuous and violent attacks.
There are various tricks that can be used to put the most fragile components far from children's reach but, most of all, I believe it is a matter of "education". Once kids learn what they can do and what they can't, your HiFi system will be safe (or trashed).
One of the tricks that worked (and still work) fine with Silvia is to let a couple of HiFi components, possibly with many buttons, switches, levers etc within her hands' reach. Of course, it shouldn't be something too valuable.
This way, since she can play with those components every time she wants, the valuable part of my HiFi systems will be safe.
Again, perhaps I've been lucky, but she LOVES Music. She is simply MAD about Music. She always asks me to turn on the HiFi system at home or to put some CD when in the car. One of her favourite CDs is Van Halen's "1984" (favourite tracks: "Jump!" and "Panama") but she can stay with me while listening to Music for hours.
I can even test HiFi components in the meanwhile! Kids _do_ love repeatable events. They can iterate the same thing hundreds of times, literally!
You know the scenario quite well: put a track, listen thto the first 30 seconds, then switch components or cables, listen to it again ad libitum.
Of course, as said above, some "education" is needed. I've had some troubles, for example, when she wanted to play with my CD collection. She broke several CD cases, then understood it was not good for her health :-) and left the CDs at their place. I repaired the CD cases (bought new ones) and now she no longer shows interest for CDs. During the hard days my CDs stayed within her reach. Moving them far from her hands would have caused a rise of interest for her.
Anyway, there are other things you can do to protect your HiFi and/or teach your kids not to damage it. I'll tell you about these in an upcoming editorial.