Horrific Confession and Question

Petland has a point. I have music playing in my outside work office all the time. It sounds great in there even thought the system if bought new would be under $500. I figure if it sounded really good I would be constantly distracted and would get no work done. Also since it is cheap I hope it won't get stolen. I have tweeked the cheap system a little with decent interconnects and a inexpensive Monster power conditioner. For notes the cheap work system and "what I paid used" is: Boston Acoustic HD5v Speakers ($50); Electrobrand full function FM/AM mini receiver (Taiwan) ($20); Fisher AD-235 Single CD Player ($20); CD Player connected with MIT PC Squared Interconnects ($25). Speaker connected with standard 16 AWG speaker wire ($10 new). So that's my workplace system for the price of a boombox ($125 total).

Oh, the Monster power conditioner is a Stage 1 filtered HT400 that I paid $20 new on a clearance sale. So that makes the whole system $145. It sounds quite good considering.

Bottom line is that GOOD music is enjoyable almost anywhere. EVEN on a less than stellar system. After all, i always thought that we bought the gear to listen to the music, not the other way around : ) Sean >

Not sure why but the other side of the post is what I'm responding to. Lots of my purchases are stuff I've heard demoed while brousing.Sometimes for gear;sometimes for software.Good music is just good music ,so when I'm in the mood to let go a few bucks,I'm more receptive. AS far as finding that street in the dark-that's what I got married for.

From my experience, unless your guests are visiting with the purpose of listening to music it really does not matter what you are playing background music on. Over the last year or so I have put together a pretty expensive, great sounding two channel system that my wife and I enjoy almost daily. When we got visitors for the holidays, they were not too excited about sitting around and listening to it with us. It ended up being played at very low volumes (for our taste) and we just as well could have been playing a boom box from a discount store. Guests like to talk to each other, dance, eat or whatever. Unless you are entertaining a very small group of audiophiles or have correct seating for a lot of people I think background music could be played on just about anything. Unless your friends and family are diferent than ours, most won't even notice.