When did the Hi-Fi sound mature?

But, the rock and classical lp's I have from the 70's and 80's definately sound ALOT better than the ones I have from the 60's...

More like poop music, Shadorne!

Commcat, with all due respect, I think your position is a bit extreme, as well as being oversimplified by not differentiating between the different types of components (along the lines of what I did in my previous post in this thread).

During the 1990's, I went through a period of several years during which I bought a lot of revered 1950's and 1960's gear, used it extensively, and eventually sold most of it. My listening was to mostly high quality, simply mic'd, audiophile-oriented classical recordings, both modern ones and audiophile-calibre reissues of highly regarded older recordings.

The turntables and cartridges of that period were a joke compared to what came later. I have had, among other speakers, a pair of very large Tannoy's, the drivers from which sell today for several thousand $. A typical discerning Audiogoner would reject them in minutes, compared to good modern speakers, due to general lack of definition.

Amplifiers and preamplifiers of that period, as I indicated in my previous post, arguably are competitive with high-end designs of today, although I think that the better parts quality that is available to designers today (other than tubes) would result in their losing the competition most of the time.

I've owned good examples of the most highly revered vintage Marantz stuff (Model 1's, 2's, 7, 9's, two 10B's), as well as a lot of McIntosh, Scott, Fisher, Brook, and other highly regarded 1950's and 1960's electronics. The only piece I ended up keeping in my main system is my REL Precedent tuner, together with a Scott multiplex adapter.

Recordings themselves, which you and Shadorne have been discussing, are a another story altogether, which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say that I have no problem finding sonically enjoyable classical material from any of the decades from the 1940's to the present one.

Regards,
-- Al

For sheer sound quality on any level, the biggest step from puberty to adulthood was supposed to be the CD player, but now it seems that puberty was maturity as the ultimate in sound seems to still be the turntable?

The definitive greatest step forward was absolutely the electronics of the golden age off HI FI. bewteen 1955 and 1965. Before 1955 or there about everything was mono.
Stereo took root from the late 50s through the mid 60s. The amps were in general low powered except the few that didn't rely on a variant of the EL-84. These amps also didn't make tons of deep shake your guts bass but had a very sophisticated input or preamp section. By the time 965 rolled around Solid State was widely used providing much more power but the amps sounded very flat and dull.
The ultimate advancement in Amp Gismos had peaked with the late 1970s Japanese solid state amps and giant all in one reievers. The best quality amongst them were the luxury brands such as Accuphase and Luxman .
The speakers that were used with the circa 1960 tube integrated amps were very efficient. The Corner Horn by Klipsch the JBL Hartsfeld 1957, The JBL 075 aluminum /alloy compression horn, with a phase plug "bullet tweeter" came out a year or two before that and the D-130 extended range 15 inch woofer with a passive radiating plate for a dust cover making some midrange were all developed by the mid 50s.
The D-130 stayed in production for 40+ years and the Bullet tweeter has yet to be discontinued. Paul Wilbur Klipsch built his horn speaker in 1948 and James Martini AKA B Lansing developed his D-130 driver that same year. The landmark in speakers that set the speaker industry racing forward was introduced 20 years earlier with a coaxial design by Guy Fountain in 1928. The speaker is simply called the Tannoy Black. They were all very efficient taking aim at using the low output amplifier signals that were the norm for that time and providing less tiney more full sounding "Concert Hall" music at realistic volumes.

Whether or not that represent a system that sounds like one made in 2009 is really not the question. Of course it doesn't but getting to this point was always a matter of quantum leaps. Thus it was the big steps that happened which culminated, so far anyway, in SOTA audio.
I for one liked the freedom that all those amplifier controls gave you. Despite the fundamentally poor sound.
I freely admit my volume and source selector preamp only. My current tube power amps with speakers made here and France are sound more to my liking than the low definition that typified the clouded sound of the mid fi from the peak of the imported SS amp/receiver.
I still hope however, that people will pull those plugs out of their ears, and we return someday to everyone having audio played out loud.
There was a time when almost everbody owned and played a stereo, believe it or not.