Late Night Listening When Wife Wants Music OFF

Wow, a little too broadly stated for me to address in much detail. Give a price range and people can be a bit more helpful.

But if absolute silence for your partner is required, in the low to moderate price range I would recommend an ipod with Etymotic ER 4P earphones. The ipod will run you $300 to $400, the ety's another $250. If you want to go way up in quality on the source and headphone amplifier you of course can, but even then Etymotic and Sure earphones are probably the only thing that will make it truly silent for your partner if you are going to be in the same bed at the time. The ER 4P's sound very good (WAY, WAY better than stock ipod ear buds) but for long listening they are not that comfortable.

But if you buy an expensive rig, you can always invest in a second pair if headphones (for when absolute silence is not essential) that will be more comfortable. If paired with a nice source and headphone amp (ABSOLUTLY NOT with an ipod alone), my default place to start (for good reason) is a pair of Sennheiser HD 650's. They run around $310 or so on ebay.

Forget the headphones, get separate bedrooms. I guess we won't see the "Audiophiles make better lovers" bumper sticker any time soon.

Stax does (or at least did) make a closed version of the their earspeaker. It's probably shown on the website at Yamasinc.

I would secound Swampwalker with the ear canal type headphones. They work great and sound fantastic. Couple sites to look at are Headphone.com and Headfi.org. Headphone sells package deals and overall are great to work with. On headfi.com you will also find alot of DIY that make great stuff like portable amp etc.

Get a pair of Etymotic ER 4P's. I use these in bed next to my wife all the time...she can't hear a thing, and I hear only the music. I use my ER4P's with an iPod video, and the synergy is very good. I have experimented with using a portable amp, and even using my ER4P's from a high-end headphone amp (my SinglePower PPX3), and the sound from the ER4P's isn't improved that much. For me, they are different from other headphones in the sense that "lowly" amplification works just great for them.

The only way for your wife not to hear a thing is to use canalphones (Etymotic, Shure, Ultimate Ears).