What is a high end stereo SUPPOSED to sound like?

The one point that high end really just means expensive is important. I don't know what just any expensive audio gear should sound like? It is not really a great question. What should an expensive car be like, fast comfortable, made of carbon fiber, etc all that matters about the car is what matters to you. You get the point.
The price of the gear, people are trying to elaborate on, which produces the perfect or ideal sound of is sort of irrelevant. The passionate answers are really answering a different question. That question is what is the perfect audio system. It was answered 5 and 6 decades ago with the term hi-fi. If you don't know it means highly like the original.
I happen to agree with Elizabeth it doesn't have to be an exact match, it can sound a little euphonic. that's what makes me happy, and that's all that matters.

Hi guys - I wanted to chime in on the conversation about recording spaces for a moment that Bryon and Mapman are having. I don't think that anyone has made the point here that one would almost never want their music to sound like the actual recording space, if we are assuming that this space is a recording studio. These are very dead environments that do not enhance the music whatsoever, meaning how the music actually sounds in that space as it is actually being played. What these types of rooms do enhance is the recording engineer's ability to make the recording sound exactly how he wants it to (which very often has nothing to do with how the musicians want it to sound, by the way). This point we have discussed on other threads, but it is certainly applicable here.

A related point, which has also been discussed on other threads, is that in general, musicians normally choose fidelity to the performance vs. fidelity to the recording of that performance (a whole bunch of recordings out there really suck, even if the performances are excellent, and why the heck would you want to be faithful to such a recording??). I think Elizabeth touches on this when she speaks of "slighty euphonic coloring." Most musicians want their systems to sound as lifelike as possible (timbres first and foremost), as opposed to trying to eliminate all "distortions." A whole lot of folks who attempt to do the latter end up with systems that throw the baby out with the bathwater, or lose the forest for the trees. Neither the recording nor the system it is played back on will ever be an exact match to the performance, as others have correctly pointed out here.

If you don't run screaming from the room when musical passages get complex and if at times you are almost startled out of your seat which makes you grin from ear to ear and the dog flick her ears back and forth ---you are on the right track!

i don't think there is a definitive answer. after all "high end" systems do not all sound the same.

so i would say as have others, it should remind you of the sound of the timbre of instruments, and it should please the owner of the stereo system.

07-07-12: Learsfool
Hi guys - I wanted to chime in on the conversation about recording spaces for a moment that Bryon and Mapman are having. I don't think that anyone has made the point here that one would almost never want their music to sound like the actual recording space, if we are assuming that this space is a recording studio. These are very dead environments that do not enhance the music whatsoever, meaning how the music actually sounds in that space as it is actually being played.

Hi Learsfool - When I said...

...the playback space must create an OMNIDIRECTIONAL PRESENTATION, because that’s what the recording space always sounds like...

...I was referring to "recording spaces" outside a studio environment, e.g., halls. I understand that fewer and fewer recordings are actually done outside the studio these days.

I am also aware of the process by which studio recordings are created. I can't remember if I've mentioned this to you, but I studied with professional recording engineers for a brief but intense period (about 3 months), during which I learned how to capture recordings on a Nagra with a variety of microphones, edit those recordings in ProTools, and mix them on a Euphonix 5-B. It was a steep learning curve, but a very rewarding experience.

During that time I spent a lot of time in recording and re-recording studios, so I'm familiar with their typical acoustics, which as you say, are dead. My observations about the importance of creating a playback space whose ambient cues emulate the ambient cues of the recording space were NOT intended to apply to studio recording spaces.

Having said that, IMO there is a corollary consideration for studio recordings, namely that, in an ideal world, the ambient cues of the playback space would emulate the ambient cues of the "virtual space" created by the re-recording engineers. In the real world, that is of course difficult to achieve, partly because of the wide variety of virtual spaces made possible by modern mixing techniques and partly because we weren't present at the mix to know how things sounded. That is another reason why, IMO, it is valuable for a playback space to be neutral.

Bryon