Greetings Steven,
I think the first thing to narrow down is speakers, even though that might not be the first thing you purchase, because the speakers you choose will determine whether or not your criteria can ultimately be met. If I understand correctly, your requirements are:
1. Speakers must sound good with less than ideal placement in a normal living room.
2. Speakers must have warm, sweet tonal balance with natural timbre.
3. Speakers must be enjoyable from well off-axis.
4. Speakers must even be enjoyable from the next room.
5. Speakers must be affordable.
This is actually a very difficult set of requirements. Let me explain:
In order to meet requirements number 3 and 4, the speakers must have very uniform dispersion characteristics, so that listeners way outside the sweet spot (and even in the next room) hear the correct tonal balance. Very few speakers do this, and even fewer affordable ones do.
For example, there is no way your basic 6.5" two-way is going to meet these requirements. The radiation pattern will be omnidirectional in the bass, narrowing with increasing frequency so that the woofer is beaming pretty severely by the time we get to the crossover point. Then the radiation pattern blooms out again as the tweeter takes over, of course narrowing as tweeter beaming sets in. So there is no way this speaker's off-axis response is going to have the correct tonal balance, much less its next-room (reverberant field) response.
Basically, there are two approaches that fulfill the off-axis and next-room requirements: 1) to use a speaker that has more or less the same controlled radiation pattern at all frequencies, or 2) to use a speaker that approximates omnidirectional radiation. An example of the first approach is Magnepan, whose speakers maintain an approximate figure-8 radiation pattern up and down the spectrum. An example of the second approach is Oskar, whose speakers use a quasi-omnidirectional ribbon-type driver crossed over at a fairly low frequency to a conventional woofer; or Shahinian, whose speakers use arrays of drivers (principally tweeters) aimed in various directions to simulate spherical radiation. (I sell one of these three brands, and they all three sound warm and sweet, have natural timbre, and are relaxing to listen to long-term.)
Now, here comes the problem: Maggies, Oskars, and Shahinians like to be positioned well out in the room, with plenty of air around them. But this is counter to our first requirement - namely, that the speaker sound good with less-than-ideal placement (which probably means placement close to the wall).
So, a critical question at this juncture is:
Where will the speakers be located??
A related question is, if necessary, can we sneak in some acoustic treatment in disguise - such as a bushy plant or two?
The answer to these questions will lead us toward which of our uniformly-dispersing speakers will best integrate with the room.
And the answer to that question will in turn tell us what our amplifier requirements are.
The easy part is the CD player. That's primarily a budget question, as room acoustics play zero role in selecting the best-sounding model. But if you have a fixed budget, looking into speakers (and amps) first will tell you how much is left over for the CD player. And, of course if not enough is left over, we have to rethink the speakers and start over.
Steve, I really think the key to getting the sound you want is getting speakers that will meet your rather unusual requirements. For years I built speakers designed to similar requirements as a hobbyist, and now as a dealer I'm naturally drawn to such designs. In fact, of the five loudspeaker lines I carry, four of them excel at getting the off-axis (reverberant) response right. But I'm quite willing to recommend something I don't sell if it turns out that would best serve your needs.
Feel free to contact me, and we can talk on the phone about your room and system.
Best of luck to you in your quest!
Duke
