Babies and Speakers

Well Dad,

You do have to aware of the "little one" ears, so playing your floorstanders at Metallica levels in your living room is probably going to be a "no no" for awhile, and over doing the bass can be upsetting for an infant trying to sleep. But playing your music at moderate levels shouldn't be a problem, especially if the music is somewhat mellow. Playing music with female vocals, classic jazz, acoustic music, string quartets and piano music and the like is actually a good thing for babies and young listeners to be exposed to. Actually I was reading an article the other day that talked about unborn babies being able to hear and respond to sounds quite well at 6 months into their development.

I bought a new pair of floorstanding speakers the same year my first baby was born (1987). I chose a pair of ADS 1090's for the following reasons: 1) I liked the sound; 2) There was no port where a baby or toddler could insert baby toys or wet wipes; 3) the drivers were protected by a perforated metal grille, which would keep curious baby fingers from poking through and ruining the speaker cones or denting the tweeters; 4) they were floorstanders, so a curious baby couldn't yank a speaker cable and pull a mini-monitor off a stand and down onto her punky li'l head.

As for being able to play them, I played them plenty, but also used some common sense. Since the year of her birth was also when I got new speakers *and* my first CD player, I was bringing home new music and playing it all the time. If you bring a child up in a musical environment, they consider it part of their environment, not an intrusion. I also used common sense and listened on headphones when mom and baby went to bed at night.

Some of the speakers offered by AV123.com use perforated metal grilles.

Jaybo, we do think alike (I think).

I was going to recommend the MAggie mmg as well.

Inexpensive and best sound at low to moderate volumes with least amount of baby (and wife) disturbing potential.

Its a no-brainer.

Congrats on the imminent arrival! Life changing stuff...and all for the good.
Play the music as much/often as possible, albeit at lower levels, at first. As Riley says, they get used to it and in the case of my daughters, learned to sleep thru most any volume setting.

Low levels on any system will work.

Low levels on mmgs might be the best sounding and very cost effective.

Give them a listen sometime if you think you will not be satisfied with what you have at low volumes, otherwise you'll be fine.

For what it's worth, I owned Maggie 1.3c's when both my children were babies. They slept well and have grown up with a nice appreciation of music as well.