Horrific Confession and Question

Oh, the Monster power conditioner is a Stage 1 filtered HT400 that I paid $20 new on a clearance sale. So that makes the whole system $145. It sounds quite good considering.

Bottom line is that GOOD music is enjoyable almost anywhere. EVEN on a less than stellar system. After all, i always thought that we bought the gear to listen to the music, not the other way around : ) Sean >

Not sure why but the other side of the post is what I'm responding to. Lots of my purchases are stuff I've heard demoed while brousing.Sometimes for gear;sometimes for software.Good music is just good music ,so when I'm in the mood to let go a few bucks,I'm more receptive. AS far as finding that street in the dark-that's what I got married for.

From my experience, unless your guests are visiting with the purpose of listening to music it really does not matter what you are playing background music on. Over the last year or so I have put together a pretty expensive, great sounding two channel system that my wife and I enjoy almost daily. When we got visitors for the holidays, they were not too excited about sitting around and listening to it with us. It ended up being played at very low volumes (for our taste) and we just as well could have been playing a boom box from a discount store. Guests like to talk to each other, dance, eat or whatever. Unless you are entertaining a very small group of audiophiles or have correct seating for a lot of people I think background music could be played on just about anything. Unless your friends and family are diferent than ours, most won't even notice.

I think there is a huge allure to background music. I will never have a dedicated sound room because I use my system so much while doing other activities and pefer it in my living room. I use it when Im cooking, cleaning, drawing, or on the computer. I think the higher end system is always more enjoyable in any situation but agree it isnt as important while doing other things.