What makes music so congested?

I saw the biggest impact by far on decongesting music come from moving from an integrated to separate mono block amps. No doubt in my mind.

There are a few items that can cause this. Old CDP laser, DAC, and preamp mostly. Replacing something as simple as the CDP laser can add clarity and separation. Your DAC can also be the issue. Preamps especially tube preamps can cause clarity issues especially if there are caps in the signal path. Caps sound different. Some are musical, some have better clarity, some can offer a mix. I would start by replacing the CDP laser if your CDP is an older model. This can be a simple cheap fix.

Happy Listening.

Ivrobinson...good idea, to eliminate the speakers and room in one swoop... how good a headphones do you think I need? Guess I could play around but never bought good headphones as it seems like it's coming from the center of my head. I remember Headroom did some headphone amp to deal with this but never tried....in fact I don't know how I'd drive them, with my vintage tube gear with no headphone output...

You know listening right now to my ProAc OneSCs in my room, my subjective thought right now is it's a node somewhere in the bass.

Regarding headphones as a tool to help eliminate congestion, I use Klipsch S4 ear buds with my Squeezebox Radio and my daughters Ipod oudoors. THese do a fantastic job of sorting through the music for only $80, even on the Ipod playing mp3s. Bass and vocals are all there and everything is well presented top to bottom I would say.

I went to a lot of rock concerts in the 70s. Outdoors, indoors, giant stadiums, amphitheaters, etc. Congested sound was the goal. Constant maximum dB output. Many early 70s rock recordings were done the that way just like their live concerts. That's why we have gravitated to more civilized styles of music, although Heart, Dreamboat Annie on London pressing sounds great and rocks.