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.
Horrific Confession and Question
While shopping for classical music in one of the mega retailers recently, I found myself quite carried away by whatever they were playing, finding the selection as well as the sound very pleasing. At the risk of never being allowed to post on this forum again, I am ashamed to admit that I discovered I was listening to BOSE mini speakers which were sticking out haphazardly from the ceiling. This leads me to wonder if background listening presents totally different challenges than focused, attentive listening. Against my audiophile background and judgement, I am wondering if I should install boomier "mid-fi" gear for multi room and entertaining guests when I renovate the house. Any thoughts?