Baby proofing the Audio life - Any advice?

[caesar]

My wife and I are expecting a baby in early November. I already purcahsed some headphones and an amp just in case. My tube gear has cages for when he grows bigger and starts crawling.

How loud can I play my system when the baby is asleep and awake?

Any other advice?

Many thanks!

 

[ack]

How loud can I play my system when the baby is asleep and awake?

It sounds like you don't know what's ahead of you You have plenty of worrying about getting some sleep yourself that worrying about audio will be as important as tying your shoes. Having said that, I never did anything to my system and my 6 year old still doesn't touch anything - in fact, he's learned to like it. But you can't play your system loud with the baby around, if that helps

 

[garylkoh]

My babies enjoyed music. Before my daughter was born, my pregnant wife and I would spend every evening listening to music. When she was born, I would have the music on and rocked her to sleep in my arms whenever she had colic. She loved jazz and female vocals. When she started crawling, whenever she touched the hifi system, I would pause the music. Then when she crawled away, I would restart it. Pretty soon, she no longer touched the music system. It worked with my son as well - so now I have two audiophile kids - 7 and 8 years old. They know when I've messed with the system, like when I took out my good cables over the weekend to bring to RMAF. They knew immediately and asked me why the system sounded bad.

Your wife would probably complain before the baby does if you play the music too loud because of "baby's sensitive ears". But consider that the baby came from inside her (which is pretty loud with the blood pumping and intestinal noises!!) music at any reasonable level isn't likely to hurt the baby's ears....... and my baby used to sleep through any music.

 

[amirm]

Having said that, I never did anything to my system and my 6 year old still doesn't touch anything - in fact, he's learned to like it.

I had the opposite experience. I was working for Sony so I bought a rear projection TV (this was early 1990s) from company store. Mistake #1 was buying our son a set of plastic tools. You know, hammers and screw drivers made out of plastic. One day I hear this banging noise from the living room. I go there and find my son banging the plastic hammer at the TV screen with a nice crack across most of it! I pull him aside, hide the hammer and look at the damage. I think about getting a replacement screen but worry that he would crack that one too. So I wait and wait...

Now it is two years later, I have resigned from Sony and it is my last two days there and I realize I had not yet bought the replacement screen. I go to the service center and to my horror, I am told that retail on that screen was $600! $600 for a piece of plastic. Anyway, employee price was lower at something like $300. I buy it but still worry that my son may break it so I store it away (mistake #2).

A couple more years go by and our son is older and past breaking things. So I go and unscrew the cracked screen and all the along tempted to just break it off but I don't. I get it out and lay it down. I open the box for the new screen and second horror scene presents itself: even though the box looked perfect, the screen inside was all shattered in the corner! So I carefully put the old, cracked one on the TV.

Make a long story short, we watched that TV for another two years through the cracks before replacing it. Did I say I am frugal that way?

 

[JackD201]

When your baby becomes a toddler, I suggest you keep your grills on. There's something about dome tweeters and woofer dust caps that are irresistible to a children and their cute little digits. I would also suggest that the preamp height be beyond their reach as well as remotes. Babies will twist and push any knob or button they can get their hands on, especially if they see you doing it.

Congratulations on the future addition to your family Caesar, may you enjoy every moment of your child's babyhood, they grow up way too fast.

 

[marty]

There is another perspective.....
When my daughter was born, I played her Mozart at night. It was thought to facilitate brain development. Can't say she loves Mozart now but her brain turned out fine. But I never catered to the "turn it down the baby's sleeping" school. My audio room was on the 3rd floor of our home in Philly and her BR was on the 2nd floor. I rocked the house regularly until the wee hours. To this day, my daughter (who is 29) can fall asleep during an earthquake and would easily sleep through a nuclear holocaust. She credits this to being well trained to sleep through loud music playing in the house at night, even though her room was of course relatively isolated from the direct path of the music.

 

[MC352]

When my kids we babies, and toddlers I kept the grilles on the speakers, and I had glass doors in front of most of the gear. As far as playing music, if you think it's too loud it probably is.
My other advice is not to tip toe around the house. The baby will get used to house noises, and music can be a part of that noise. I always played music, and many a time they fell fast asleep to it. I remember my middle one drinking his bottle, and falling asleep in front of the stereo many many times.
Anyway, you won't hear the baby when it wakes up with those headphones on.

 

[flez007]

I had a similar story, my kids grew up with music and cables all around!, they were used to hear music at decent hours and even played wih them with their imagination while listening to music. I have never had an accident (knocking on wood) with my gear - including cartiridges - where my kids were involved or were the motive of it.

I would suggest to keep an eye on them, your audio setup might not be the first source of an accident for a toddler if you follow comon sense rules.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I never changed my playing patterns nor my system setup one iota once our daughter was born. IMO it's important to let the baby become accustomed to your lifestyle, as opposed to you changing yours. We never had any issues. Congrats by the way!

John

 

[DonH50]

^^^ Ditto 1000x. All we read and were advised by doctors and friends said to let the baby become accustomed to normal activities. While I would not have the baby in the room when playing loudly, normal'ish levels should be fine. You want the child to sleep under normal conditions, not have to have a silent house.

Pick up the book What to Expect the First Year for some great advice. We left the hospital and realized we had been well-prepared for the pregnancy but woefully ill-prepared for our new home life as parents.

The first six weeks are the hardest, when sleep comes in 1 - 2 hour intervals, but in some ways the most rewarding. Of course, my wife got feeding duty, and I got to deal with the other end...

True story: Our first son was born around Christmas (day before) and a few weeks after we got home he was sleeping in the stocking they sent home with him while I was cleaning up and wife was trying to sleep in the other room. He slept through me taking down the tree and various sit-arounds, vacuuming, and "Superman" blasting away on the TV so I could hear over all this. Finally, the Superbowl started, Rosie sang the SSB, and he woke up screaming as she sang. Knew right away he'd be a musician! - Don

 

[kareface]

Two words: Shock collar.

 

[JackD201]

Ooooh nasty!!!! Who you turning into Cartman face?

 

[DonH50]

Mental note: Keep kareface away from kids...

 

[JoeESP9]

It's refreshing the posters here are from the house proof the kid school and not from the kid proof the house school. I've seen more than one thread started on other sites asking how to protect someone's gear from their kids. I've always thought that was the wrong approach. My son like myself was taught from very early on that there are some things you just don't touch.

 

[Robh3606]

My son like myself was taught from very early on that there are some things you just don't touch.

Me too and that's what I did with mine. Never had a problem with them. Now the friends are another issue. Only time one of my drivers was man handled that I am aware of was by a neighbors child. I was lucky and caught him in the act before any damage was done asside from finger prints on the gold dome tweeters.

I never really did a thing to change my listening habits. The kids just grew up with me listening to the stereo. Never had to worry about them going to sleep at all. They had there own little "stereos" to listen to music as they fell asleep.

Rob