Are most recordings so bad it's not worth spending large on speakers?

To answer your question, No... just be sure not to buy speakers from someone that narrow minded. 

Recording quality has always varied from awful to excellent! Same for speaker quality! 

When I think of lifelike, words like clarity and dynamics come to mind...and these words apply to the sound produced by a 10 piece brass band when you are 20' away and to a rock band in a club when you are 20' away.


It seems to be pretty rare that the recording process of a live event can capture those dynamics and clarity without clipping and/or harshness.  Therefore, whether the music is recorded from a live event or in the studio, the engineers are somewhat constrained with taking the input and making an output that sounds good...and won't have us jumping for the volume control like many of the Telarc recordings do....and how often do we want to actually listen to music at home at 100db which is often the level of live music when heard from 20' away.

The compromise is to find speakers/electronics that sound both good and as close to live as possible....in your room and with your music choice.

In that regard....there are lots of great choices and champions for each choice both here and on Audio Circle.....and you don't have to spend $14k...probably not even half that amount...and they will sound really good for both music and tv.