I know how you feel--you gotta keep peace in the home. I remember the day I brought home my first pair of Model 19's. My wife literally cried tears when my brother and I set them down in our living room. She said something like "your speakers keep getting bigger and bigger--I don't want those giant things in our living room!" I thought about it, and I do more listening in my mancave anyways (finished basement), so I told her "that's ok honey, I'll move them down to the basement". And I was the hero, even though after thinking it over I prefer them down there where I listen the most--but I wasn't going to tell her that. She still thinks I made a big sacrifice for her by moving them downstairs--and I'm OK with that! Since then, I bought a pair of Model 14's for the living room -- which are slightly smaller than the Heathkit AS 101's that I used to have there (sold those). And I was the hero again--I told her something like "honey, I bought these so we could move to smaller speakers--I know you don't want giant speakers in the living room". I conveniently "forgot" to mention (although she may have figured that one out) that my main motivation was that I had wanted to upgrade the AS 101's with Model 14's to get better sound (the 14's have a much better crossover with h.f. compensation which complements their 902 tangerine drivers, a really powerful 13 1/2" frame woofer and much deeper cabinet tuning--way better bass, treble, and mids than the AS 101's). Since then, I've bought a second pair of Model 19's for my (finished basement) recording studio ( a bigger room than the mancave where I have my other pair of 19's), so I'm done buying Altecs for now (unless I find a nice pair for the garage!). Fortunately, both pair of 19's are in the finished basement where I do most of my recording and listening, and the 14's at "normal" listening levels with my living room acoustics rival the 19's...... I'd be hard pressed with her to put any big speakers in our living room/on our first floor--I'm just lucky that now that I have the 14's in our living room I have no interest in changing my first floor speakers anyways......