Thanks to so many for so much encouragement—even to chrshanl37 for comparing my post to Stewart Smalley (ouch! but point taken). The general, and reasonable, consensus seems to be that "music lover" and "audiophile" are not synonymous, but not mutually exclusive either. Of course, that's true. And, despite the fact that I don't suffer from the kind of intervention-demanding fanaticism described by ghdprentice, I do consider myself an audiophile. You probably know the snide definition attributed to Allan Parsons: "Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment." Like the comment about Stewart Smalley, that stings a bit—because I often enough choose what I want to hear for the recording quality rather than the performance quality or even the music's own intrinsic quality. I mean, I do have recordings that sound great on my system but are insipid musically, and I do periodically listen to them. That is to say, I find it thrilling that a technology can reproduce something like a symphony orchestra in my living room with astonishingly convincing realism. Never mind the music; that fact is compelling in its own right.
Finally, though, the music is what matters. But musical taste is very personal, and not frankly all that easy to share even with close friends. This forum, it seems to me, rarely is interesting when the music itself is at issue. And that makes sense, when you think about it. We have very different backgrounds, different levels of musical knowledge, and different tastes in music—but we all love good sound quality. Of course, even there, taste counts for a lot. But still, more expensive equipment does, usually, sound better, "system synergy" is a thing that needs to be learned, and inexpensive tweaks can sometimes bring very satisfying results. That's what I come to this forum for more than anything else: advice on ways I can improve my sound quality without spending a lot.
Anyway, thanks for the (mostly) friendly responses here. In case anyone's interested, I'm going to make my "virtual system" public now.