What is a high end stereo SUPPOSED to sound like?

Audiophiles love to battle their rooms to improve room acoustics. Sometimes, certain battles can be won but in the end the room is what it is unless of course you totally change it into something else. That's true of live venues and studios during production and our rooms at home during playback.

Room acoustics can and generally are conquered to the extent needed to SIMULATE a live sound in your room, but what you get is more off an abstract Monet determined largely by room acoustics than an accurate reproduction of what things sounded like originally.

"but what you get is more off an abstract Monet determined largely by room acoustics"

Actually room acoustics and the recording production process together determine what a recording will sound like in your room and how "lifelike".

A "high end system" should be capable of fooling you with the right recording playing more times than not I would say. But in all cases it should remain true to the recording.

the problem with the term "high end", is that is a typical audiophile term.

it has no definitive definition.

if , as audiophiles, we could agreee on the definition of high end, the question raised by this thread would be answered.

the fact that there are so many responses indicates that, like other audiophile terms, its subjective in nature and either is a rhetorical question or is a matter of opinion.

i suppose then that asking the question is designed to elicit as many perspectives as possible.

as a practical matter it doesn't have any affect upon one's ability to enjoy listening to recordings.

such a question demonstrates that philosophy and "audiophilia", share many attributes.

Sounds almost live!!

Practically, and in an objective manner consistent with modern best practices for effectively leveraging technology, I would define high end by applying the 80/20 rule therefore a high end system must practically be in the top 20% and better than 80% of the systems out there overall.

Ok, so now you have to define what "better" means. That of course will involve different strokes for different folks.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Does it really matter what "high end " means? Maybe the whole concept should just be dumped.