My wife loves listening to music. We go to live shows and music festivals quite often. What she doesn't like to see is a a bunch of clutter and a stack of hi-fi equipment put on display like a Donald Judd sculpture. Although if I could get my hi-fi system to look like that, maaaaybe she'd be ok with it. I'm not a fan of the typical hi-fi room setup that most audiophile men prefer. You know the room...the monoblocs sitting on the dust covered floor, a $50 area rug, a "rack" of components and cables going every which way to the reference towers that, I hate to say, all look terrible the more expensive they get. As an architect, that type of room has no visual appeal to me. Almost as bad as having a ton of sports memorabilia hanging on the wall.
Needless to say, my wife and I have similar tastes in music. We enjoy listening, as background music: jazz, r&b, country, acoustical/folk, rock, pop, gospel. What she isn't big into is electronic, industrial, heavier classic rock, avant garde, and classical. She likes old school hip hop and Christian music. I'm not a fan.
I have plenty of guy friends who aren't into hi-fi but enjoy listening to music. They predominately stream because it's convenient and you can listen to everything. A few have vinyl but they aren't actively collecting.
I have always had a dedicated hi-fi system of some level since I was a young kid. My parents owned a local record store in the early 80s so listening and collecting music was something I grew up with. I have select records I inherited when my dad passed.
If your wife/GF/significant other isn't into listening to one album in a sitting, so what. A lot has changed culturally when people used to do that 60 years ago.
Our current house has powered speakers with wi-fi for multi-room listening and I get a corner of the living room for my hi-fi set-up and I rotate out vinyl and cds that I play while the rest stays discreetly hidden away in built-in cabinets. Honestly I prefer that because no-one messes with my equipment, records, and cds. Not even the kids bother to get curious because they know not to touch. But they enjoy listening to music and we have dance parties sometimes.
My goal with hi-fi isn't to convince others to join the cult. It's to better my personal listening experience and make general music listening for everyone else enjoyable and painless.
