Evaluating a system - what do you listen for?

My first: Effortless listening.

After this tonal balance and lastly dynamic range

By effortless listening I mean, I don't feel like I have to interpret or filter out anything. Listen to a tape recording of people in an office, and you'll suddenly hear the room they are in. All the echo which if you were in the room your brain would be constantly working to remove. This is what I most want gone.

Related to this, I want a glass smooth and extended tonal balance. I probably like my speakers a little darker or warmer than most.

Dynamic range is important but I can't really listen very loudly. What I want is utter ease of dynamics within the volume I listen to.

The thing I care about the least is precision imaging. Hyper detailed localization of instruments doesn't sound natural to me, and is often achieved by sacrificing the tonal balance.

If you have a relatively accurate home system it's going to reveal good and bad things, including what the recording engineer did with the pan pots on the mixing board. One of my pet peeves (which I can ignore if I like the music) is the "20 foot wide drum kit" syndrome which exists on a lot of the jazz trio (and other stuff) recordings I listen to…unless somebody is in the far corner of the room playing just a high hat or a tom…in that case it's fine. I like coherency, which I've determined is the key for me both in my home rig and the concerts I produce and mix. Live shows always (except for musicians getting stuck in traffic) have a sound check where you try to get a balance that the artists like, and that is sometimes destroyed at show time by a musician who decides to play much louder (rare, but man…) requiring re-mixing on the fly…I still get paid. However, tonal coherency keeps you from losing interest…screechy treble, boomy bass…no no no.

Plus one to erik_squires and wolf_garcia.  I am still looking to refine tonal balance and musical whole. gee-whiz? No thanks.