"What's with the Fisher Price speakers?"

had almost exactly the same experience as Michael Chabon in this touching mini-memoir of audio love... year upon year, listening to music nonstop during the course of a seven to eight hour working day,but almost exclusively through a pair of speakers that came with the computer.... abruptly realising a few years ago "this is idiotic"... buying what looks like from Chabon's description the exact same much superior set (two translucent glass sticks and a blue-glowing glass jellyfish of a subwoofer to go on on the floor -- you see them in a lot of people's studies and homes), and kicking myself for all those years of degraded listening... i mean i'm sure these are lightweight business compared to serious audiophile gear but trust me the new set up is about 20 times better than what i subjected myself to for about 8 years

where we live now my work space is much nearer where the proper stereo and turntable are which means i can actually listen during "office hours" to A/ vinyl / tapes B/ to CDs how they really should be heard (not that it's an audiophile job either but miles better than a computer)... but of course i still do a lot of the listening via computer on account of so much music now arriving as immaterial data: podcasts, djmixes, zipped + passworded advances from record labels, eMusic, YouTube, streams, not forgetting the naughty naughties... so it's good to have something that can deliver a measure of depth, detail, body, presence, and BASS...

now i have to work on getting a better thing inside the computer to run music on than what i have.... any recommendations?