I've been reading audiobooks almost exclusively since 1982 through the US National Library Service's Talking Books program, and all of their narrators are top-notch. Very occasionally there is someone with an accent I find harder to follow but the problems created by unusual accents are never so severe that I stop reading a book. My impression of commercial audio books is that they tend to be jazzed up with (a) background music and (b) narrators who assume different "voices" for the various characters. I prefer just the book, read in a straightforward way. But I do wish sometimes that the readers would make it clear where a quotation begins and ends, maybe by saying "Quote" and "End quote."

Sorry, I haven't been checking in here regularly. I'm not sure what "universally compatible" means or means to you. It's a common format because it takes up less room and is acceptable to most people because many don't pay attention to sound quality. Any MP3 sounds inferior to any lossless or WAV file, it's a fact with a well known cause. There are many things that are widely used that are inferior to alternatives - most fast and processed food items fit this description. No more need be said. Audio files are put on CDs in a form of WAV. When you rip a CD to a lossless format (whether FLAC or Apple's ALAC) you get a file that's identical data wise to the CD but about half as large and with the ability to hold tags (metadata). WAV is impractical because they're so big. FLAC and ALAC are like Zip files for data - if you take a WAV file and process it to produce a lossless file and then reverse the process by processing the lossless file back to WAV, the second WAV file and the first will be bit for bit identical. When ripping files, it's inevitable that tags need a bit of sprucing up. Many of the free rippers (EAC, iTunes, Windows Media) offer rudimentary tag info and cover files but in an incomplete way. There are programs to help tagging (free MP3 Tag is my favorite, can be used on any kind of sound file) and most refer to any of the several free online databases like MusicBrainz or Discogs for the info. What you should do is tag your "good" lossless rips and then if MP3 versions are needed, rip the FLAC or ALACs to MP3s as a separate step because the tag data will go along with it. I use Foobar to do the conversions and you can set it up to put the MP3s in folders just the same as your "good" versions are in. It can be done in one, however large batch process that can be set up to do thousands of files at once. It doesn't happen instantaneously, it can take hours. Remember that you can convert an MP3 to a FLAC or ALAC file but once it's been processed from WAV to MP3, data is lost and changing the format to lossless doesn't restore it. My wife's car won't play FLAC files, and she also has a portable player for music as for plane flights, so this is an example where it's quick and easy to process MP3s from CD quality rips when needed. Otherwise, it's the CD quality rips that are used.

Audiophiles are indeed particular souls, and with good reason. The equipment is an investment, and when you start looking at the uber high-end brands, there's no comparing it to even one of the better lines such as Bose. No idea what brand of equipment your hubby owns, but he values it and that's all that matters. I agree with the suggestion to simply get a larger console to tuck away as many of the components as appropriately fit, but I would not fret the fact that there are speakers on the floor. I think we tend to get a bit obsessive over having our homes picture-perfect, when the reality is that we share them with others who have a host of interests and tastes, and they too should have a say in what goes into a room. Besides, those speakers are not at all obtrusive IMO. (You want obtrusive? These ginormous, tall corner pieces are very similar to my father's Klipsch horns. They currently sell for just under $15k. This is not your Bose sound. ;-))

The wifi may be too weak for the app to operate properly. Apps don't always show a notification when that is the case. I haven't used Overdrive for audiobooks, just ebooks, but I always download them so I don't need mobile data or wifi to read them. Libby is another version of Overdrive, isn't it? I'm not familiar with Chirp, but I do use Hoopla, and that one doesn't download materials, so it won't work without a strong signal, and it doesn't let you know that's the case either. I had to figure that out on my own.