So we have all been there, or have we? We have spent hours surfing the web or roamed stores and rummaged through catalogues in our quest of finding the best possible speakers, the tube amp to match, the right rack, cables to die for and peripherals to fill a small stable. Everything is perfect on paper, an audiophile dream come true and then... Our spouse says "No, sorry. Ugly. Can´t happen". "Yes but... the sound...", we start formulating our reply, but know well before we open our mouths that this is an unwinnable war for us. Being right is not more important than being happy.
To my relief, I found there is an established concept for this phenomenon, a measureable for the likelihood of a particular stereophonic dream going down the gutters on the grounds disapproval by the one who is supposed to support us in our pursuit of sonic happiness. It used to be called the Wife Acceptability Factor or WAF in short, but as early as 1988 it became clear that the term was to be broadened as it was found to be uniformly and equally applicable to heterosexual, gay, and lesbian couples. So SAF, the Spouse acceptability factor it was.
Now even having it´s own page on Wikipedia, we learn "that Larry Greenhill first used the term "Wife Acceptance Factor" in September 1983, writing for Stereophile Magazine, but Greenhill credited fellow reviewer and music professor Lewis Lipnick with the coining of the term."
While alternate terms were suggested for the same phenomenon, such as MIF (Marriage Interference Factor) and it was suggested that investment in expensive and bulky looking audiophile gear could be compensated for by investing equal sums in compensational things like trips to Paris, the opera or jewelry, the term that stuck was SAF.
SAF of course has an official definition at this point that has become wildly accepted at an encyclopedic level.
“The Spouse Acceptance Factor is inversely proportional to the possible amount of conflict resulting from the different points of view. The lower the WAF, the more convincing needs to be done, or the more conflict arises from the acquisition or project.”
Luckily there is audio gear that has an extremely high SAF while also sounding simply awesome, and while we as the makers of the Sound Sommeliers line of customizable loudspeakers don´t claim to be the only pretty girl in town, there is something to be said about the unique ability of our customers spouses to relate to the aesthetics of our product and get involved in its making by matching the drapes, picking that very favorite color applying the family tartan or creating a unique piece of visual art to distract from audiophile perfection. And at 299 for a pair of speakers, we are definitely not talking about a trip to Paris here to mitigate the already high SAF of our products.