The problem today is to convince folk that, given the clarity of sound available from even cheap digital sources, it is worth spending some money on projecting that sound into a room. We need to convince them to but good loudspeakers, and probably active one to make it neat, easy and cheap.
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I personally think that the money is better spent on decent headphones to first appreciate the "clarity of sound available from even cheap digital sources". That might be enough persuasion to go down the HiFi route, it was for me..
...considering myself 'today's folk' being in my early 20's, having had no previous experience with HiFi I invested in a decent entry pair of headphones after discovering the likes of Spotify and Amazon mp3 which made it very easy and quick to listen to a wide variety of music.
Hearing how good the headphones sounded over all the previous cheapy stuff I'd owned I did a little research and brought a DAC with a built in headphone amp (Beresford Caiman) which improved the experience significantly so I upgraded to a premium account.
I then started buying CD's again, still using the PC as the source but ripping them into high quality FLAC files instead of 128kb/s mp3's as I used to.
As soon as I'd left home I went straight out and bought my first HiFi second hand* and am now re-discovering music!
The single item that convinced me it was worth spending the money on quality kit was the headphones (thank-you Sennheiser). I looked at active loudspeakers as you mention, but with the regards to being cheap; I think if I'd spent £100 on active monitors instead of over-ear headphones I wouldn't have been able to appreciate what I was missing in terms of quality.
Until the headphones I was quite happy with my PC 2.1 system. I still have a 2.1 system, except now it consists of a *Roksan amp, stand-mounted B&W speakers and a sub..
My little brother seems quite content with his ipod etc but when he played a few tracks through the system he was astonished.
I can now see what my Granddad was on about

(and why he had a room full of audio equipment).