Why not horns?

"The Better any system get's to the truth, is the less you will experience these so called un-listenable tracks... "

I agree. I suspect this may be the most useful metric regarding system quality of all.

I think we might be having a linguistic challenge. I don't consider hardness and harshness to be synonymous. For the record I have not complained about harshness from my system. On rare occasion I detect a bit of hardness. I am confident that this is recording dependent.

The better a system the less likely it will exaggerate problems in the recordings, but, unless one manipulates the recording play back, the flaws won't be hidden either. If the flaws are minimal one can easily overlook them if the balance of the recording satisfies.

The Better any system get's to the truth, is the less you will experience these so called un-listenable tracks.

IME bad recordings bring out the worst in the system as well. So if the system allows you to listen to bad recordings without editorializing, so much the better. I often use bad recordings to give me an idea of hidden artifact in a stereo.

What has been interesting about this is that I have found recordings that I **thought** were bad, but in time were found to have so much energy that a bad system couldn't play it right!

As you might imagine this has nothing to do with horns one way or another.

Unsound, if you can I recommend trying to find a way to hear the original pressing on LP of Sketches. I think you will find that the mic technique is not that bad! I've spent a lot of time in the studio and what you find when you do that is that digital systems lack more than just low level resolution. To make them sound right, you have to accommodate the differences and do the mix differently. I've had to go back and forth in digital mixdowns dealing with this issue: what you hear when you mix is not what you hear in the digital result. Older recordings from the analog era can't benefit from this process, so things that might seem to sound a certain way are found to not be so once you hear the original.

"What has been interesting about this is that I have found recordings that I **thought** were bad, but in time were found to have so much energy that a bad system couldn't play it right! "

I have found this out in recent years as well and suspect this is a common malady for many.

I find a lot of modern "loudness wars" recordings and remasters fall into this category. They have a lot of "energy" as you say which exacerbates their inherent limitations as well when the playback system just cannot handle it.

This is where I have found the Class D amps I am using currently to be a godsend with my less efficient speakers that I am fond of otherwise.

Similarly, good higher efficiency speakers with perhaps fewer quality watts driving them are the other solution scenario I believe.