I would say best bang for buck is get a nice set of headphones and a matching headphone amp. Or save until you can afford a nice set of speakers. Go listen to as many speakers as you can and pick your favorite. Take your wife with you and treat her to dinner afterwards. It always comes down to speakers. Quality speakers with mediocre equipment will always sound better than mediocre speakers with quality equipment.
Great advice. A headphone system may be just right for him.
Check out my profile. I would recommend a power conditioner to get started. Buy good quality power cables if necessary. The one I’m using already has a hard-wired power cord... no need to replace it (it’s actually over-specified) it will never be damaged due to overheating or a loss of current transfer. The designer of this power conditioner spent a lot of time, resources, and invested in plenty of research to build a superior product.
I’m listening to the Meters Novu-1 headphones with a Panasonic CD player paired to an audio techica headphone amp. Based on the amount of electricity used, this system is tough to beat! The headphone out of the portable CD players I own all sound different, as do their outputs. So.. a lot of variety in terms of finlding the most suitable sound signature for you.
I think a slightly warm, fairly neutral-sounding rig would be fine for you. Once you get in to audio forensics, tracks that usually sound alright might sound start to sound really ugly. So keep that in mind...