Another basic newbie question.

Stevecham.  Very nice. I’m gonna make a T-shirt....

Kudos @stevecham  ...Brilliant statement ! 

As long as the emotional impact of the music exceeds your attention to the equipment that provides it, you'll be ok.

I think you'll be surprised at what your ears pick up after you've been listening to the system for a while.  There are all kinds of subtleties to good sound and your ears will begin to sort them out.  I remember in the early days thinking "Oh, that must be what they're talking about."  Of course the downside of all of this is that you'll be able to identify crappy sound in a heartbeat (and possibly won't be able to listen to it anymore!). :-)

I wouldn't worry about being more analytical.  Not necessarily a good skill to have.

I'm not sure I have the ears for it. I like it. I appreciate it. I can hear differences in cheap vs better systems. But I'm not sure I'll ever get to the level of sensitivity _and_ recognition I hear described among audiophiles. Not sure I'll ever fully appreciate the system I have.

But I will enjoy it.

“You'll be an "audiophile" before you know it......”

He already is. He just doesn’t know it 😁

You'll be an "audiophile" before you know it........

Oz

Thank you. I was mostly just curious. I've got two decent CD players and don't think I would bother spending more on a new one with balanced output at this point.

I'll be getting some decent RCA cable though.

n80, some source components (e.g., CD players) DO have balanced (XLR) outputs and that is what you would use these for.  Others can chime in on the relative merits of balanced vs single-ended (SE) connections between components but, basically, balanced connections can be much longer without being subject to picking up noise and the gain is double what single-ended connections provide (I haven't mixed them but I would imagine this could lead to having to drastically adjust the volume when switching between SE and balanced components in a system).  Don't worry if you have a single-ended component - looking at the back of the LS16 version I think you have, you could use either the AUX SE or TUNER connections.