If you really enjoy music, I would recommend more then background music. You could rebuild a simple system after researching which would be emotionally involving to listen to at more exciting volumes without being critical. My system lends itself to just enjoying the music. I do not have a very expensive system, but one which is painstakingly put together. I believe many music lovers out there have systems they enjoy. In my particular system, I believe a few things have made a real difference.
1. A CDP with very low jitter distortion aided by a digital filter in the AC line. Excellent mechanical isolation.
2. Much of my collection are JVC XR CDs which are phenominally musical.
3. My preamp and amp both have single voicing with only one output device per channel
4. My speakers were designed meticulosly for seemless 3 dimensional silky reproduction.
5. Proper AC line purification has helped a great deal
6. Sistrum speaker stands made a real difference.
The secret is focusing more on the music and less on the system, but the state of the art is too good to throw in the towel. My system has no glare, edge, haze, grit, brightness, veiling, dullness, dryness, coldness, overly sweet or overly warm, mechanical, "digital sounding" or any of those negative qualities. It just sounds, natural, nonfatiguing, musical with nice bloom, harmonically rich and accurate timbre. I suspect there are thousands out there with similar results. Please don't give up!
