OP said he wanted to come within inches of having his ears blown off by good sounding music.
Just sharing my experience, that is something you need true high current equipment for and cannot achieve with poofter Sony equipment.
sadly, you’ll convince no one. plenty of people have convinced themselves that both 1) they can hear a mouse fart from a mile away, and 2) audio is some unique little snowflake which can’t be explained by science/physics.
we’re talking about people who think speaker wire makes a significant difference in the sound quality of their system because of a putative 0.01 dB difference at 20 kHz, but don’t realize their speakers have at best a +/- 6 dB frequency response within their passbands, and the room they’re listening in just fucks everything else up.
people want to think they’re special. they want to believe they truly can hear things no one else can, and truly believe using pillars to hold their speaker wires off of the floor makes a difference. problem is that all of these supposed “tweaks”- whether it be coloring the edges of your CDs green, or using $1000 RCA cables, or placing Mpingo discs on your equipment- always (always) result in the listener claiming it’s an improvement. That blob of jelly between your ears is easy to fool. If you do something expecting an improvement, you will perceive an improvement. it’s like those bunk fuel-saving devices such as magnets which clamp onto the fuel line of your car. They do absolutely nothing, but people put one on and then- expecting an increase in mpg- will drive more gently. Lo and behold, they get better fuel economy and think it’s because of the useless magnets.
Last year I did a bit of research and picked up this Yamaha network stereo reciever, a sub woofer from outlaw and some Pioneer speakers that are highly rated for the price. All the functions of a classic audio system plus excellent network integration for digital music. Not an audiofile system by any means but still quality no-nonsense components. It sounds fantastic to my ears and is as loud as I ever want to subject my neighbours to.
Supports Pandora, Spotify, DLNA, Airplay, Android, usb, Net Radio, cd, tuner, phono, and multiple optical, coaxial and RCA line in’s. Comes with a remote, but its most convenient to just control from my phone with the app. TEAC and Onkyo have similar products. There is probably a lot more choice if you are going to go for a theater system but I wanted something specifically for music so I found a stereo system.
You can’t convince someone with tin ears that NAD or Harmon Kardon or Yamaha is better than Sony, because they can’t tell the difference.
I know, it’s a joke. Tying a suppository high end player into a low-mid grade mp3 player systems is a hoot. Who want to pay $27 for yet another copy of a Led Zeppelin album? I mean for Christ sake you probably damaged your hearing beyond repair the first time you heard it forty years ago.
I thought it was maybe a joke, but wasn’t sure.
And I love linking to that article. So much ignorance confronted and dispelled.
Personally, If I’m relaxing I’d rather listen to AM broadcast talk radio than good music on a shitty stereo.