how would you describe a system that is musical in nature

It means it possesses your preferred inaccuracies.  I have no problem with people preferring whatever but calling that preference "musical" is kind of silly.  It elevates a personal preference to a level it doesn't belong at.

@ghdprentice 

Over the decades one by one each of my components ended up being tube. I imagine you could put together a non - tube really musical system. But honestly I have heard dozens and dozens of spectacular systems… I have owned a lot of fantastic component. Great systems… that I loved for their natural sound, imaging , and amazing rendering. But true emotional connection… has only come to me with tubes.

Same....sounds like something I would have written!

One that is "musical in nature" to me is one that doesn’t have any audible properties that distract me from the music and make me think of the speakers or the electronics. It may not be state of the art in other ways.
It sounds like it should be pretty easy to achieve that, but it isn't. 

@jon_5912

It means it possesses your preferred inaccuracies. I have no problem with people preferring whatever but calling that preference "musical" is kind of silly. It elevates a personal preference to a level it doesn’t belong at.

Sorry....but I have to respectfully disagree. If my sonic preferences for my sound system resemble what I hear when I listen to real music, it seems extremely logical to deem those traits as "musical".

@knotscott.

+1   
I have season tickets to the Oregon symphony (astonishing good orchestra and venue), 7th row center for the last ten years. It was listening in this verse  that I  subconsciously changed the trajectory of my system investments away from artificial highlighted characteristics and towards the musical tube systems I have now.