I was suggesting duplicating what you might find in a recording studio...crown amps, mackie monitors, etc. to give you the same sound experience that the sound engineer created.
I think CD's sounding like crap is somewhat subjective. Remember that most CD's are made to sell to the masses and to sound good on the typical home/college/car sound system.
By creating an exceptionally good sound environment in your home, you are not creating the environment that the CD was made for. Ditto for most movie DVD's.
The folks who do the audio work on CD's absolutely do care about the sound...they get some big bucks to make that sound right...they are just creating a final CD tuned to a different sound than you want.
Of course the simplest example is on voice recordings where audio is expanded/compressed, reverbed, effected to the point where you probably wouldn't recognize the performer if they sang in front of you without a mic. So tone control using wires or whatever is almost rediculous.
Then again, most of us have only heard the performers after being processed by all the electronics, so we are trying to recreate a sound that isn't natural.
(BTW, I spend lots of time tuning my home system too...I just think that some who take audio too seriously have to really sit back and think about the whole sound thing)
