Very realistic imaging and soundstaging. Ideally the gear will neither add nor subtract anything to what's contained in the recording. The goal with my current stereo setup was to achieve, as closely as possible, the same kind of very high resolution and very low distortion I was getting from my cross-fed, balanced, planar headphone rig. I think I've gotten there with the synergy of the PS Audio>Merrill Audio>Dynaudio chain but of course with the correct spatial cues for a "live" music presentation not possible with headphones. All my previous two-channel systems fell short of this ideal. Also, the addition of Convoluted foam-Egg Crate Acoustic Studio Soundproofing for the rear wall was a hugely beneficial tweak.
With roughly 8,000 Redbook CD's, I'm pretty much committed to a CD player as my source. I've looked into converting everything to flac files and going the music server route, but the task turns out to be just too daunting and/or expensive. Plus I just really love browsing through all my discs.
