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

There are a few really bad recordings around, but certainly less than 5%. The rest range from good and fun to listen to exceptional and mind blowingly mesmerising through the right system. 

Buy good speakers but you need to ensure that your source is up to the task, because the quality of the source is exactly what you’ll hear through your new speakers. 

Finally soundstage and imaging are both in the brain, created by psychoacoustics based on the sounds reaching both ears. To get great imaging requires great accuracy of frequency, amplitude and phase (timing). If there are too many errors, your brain gets confused and can’t create the imaging you’re looking for. The errors are basically the sum of room, speaker, amplifier and source distortions of the recorded signal  

Most amplifiers are so flat as to say they are perfectly flat unless intended to not be. Digital sources are perfectly flat. Most analog sources strive for this. We can't change the recording, so we are stuck with that. Amplitude then is completely signal/volume dependent. Frequency accuracy by far dominated by room and speaker. Phase is again, if the signal chain is competently designed, typically orders of magnitude more influenced by the speaker (and room) than anything else. Accuracy of these things is again completely dominated by speaker and room.   It is very hard to argue the signal chain, competently implemented, has noticeable impact on sound-stage and imaging when just moving your location a bit swamps out the effects.

atdavid

It is very hard to argue the signal chain, competently implemented, has noticeable impact on sound-stage and imaging when just moving your location a bit swamps out the effects.

More illogic from atdavid. That something may be difficult for you to understand does not mean that it is "hard to argue." In this instance, your claim is rather like stating, "It's hard to argue we can put a man on the moon when I get stuck in traffic every day on my way to work."

cleeds,
So school me  (instead of childishly trolling me).


Spell out for me, in any level of detail you choose, the impacts on phase and frequency response of a competently designed audio signal chain versus the impact on phase and frequency response of:

1. A speaker and room in general.
2. A person moving 1 ft (30cm) in a listening space.

Take all the time you need. Hint though, the information for 1 is readily available on the web, 2 you may need to work for.

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

The simple answer is 'no'.
There are many gems. The better your system, the better those gems sound.