Progressive Rock

I guess I would say that my system was built for that purpose as well since prog rock, new and old makes up a significant portion of my collection. But ultimately, I found that the things that make the great prog rock great, are the same things that make orchestral and certain big band works enjoyable, at least to me - the ebb and flow, the large scale dynamics, and the intricacy. So I selected components capable of both detail and bombast, and landed with Jeff Rowland and Aesthetix for amplification, Simaudio and VPI for sources, and Wilson Audio for speakers. And yes, I always bring the first Gentle Giant album along to audition equipment.

Cheers,

My budget was alot less than $12,000 for speakers, I put a $5000 price on my entire rig. I ended up with Paradigm Studio 60 speakers, they imaged reasonably well, had the grunt down low and decent high frequency response. Been very happy with these and they're the only remaining piece after 6 years on the upgrade treadmill. They always responded to improvements upstream, never were the weak link. Getting to the point though where they're next to go.
Although alot of the prog releases are of mediocre recording quality, the remasters are often terrific!
The Rhino remasters of ELP, The Ocean digital remasters of Yes, the mini LP Fripp remasters of King Crimson and to a lesser degree, the definitive remasters of Genesis are all of high quality and shine on good audio gear. Porcupine Tree's catalog is high quality, Floyds stuff has always been top shelf.
Guess my preference for a progressive rock system is full range speakers and electronics with good imaging. Within reasonable $$ limits tho. Many audiophiles have $15,000 dollar systems and $1000 of CD's. I have over 2000 CD's ($20,000) and a $5000 system, wouldn't have it the other way.

Rock is not high-end-ish music.
It's more complicated to record well and therefore it often doesn't sound as good as Jazz or Classical.

Revdog, prog bands even with big contracts such as Jethro Tull havn't been recorded well on the most cases.

Contrary, Can being always an undergrownd band without any mega-million contracts, has excellent recordings (every single one of them), thanks to the Holger Czukay's extra talent of a recording engineer(no extra spendings to producers etc...). The reasons that it couldn't be played in NYC CES are
1)they're unknown to the public
2)they have a lot of sophisticated cacophonic reefs that would only be understandable to an experienced listener or musician.

FZ having some relation to a mix of everything also didn't sound well on many of his albums.

PROG is a four letter word !

sorry 'bout that ... I guess in the 70's ELP, Yes, Genesis never left my Technics TT, 'til I discovered Springsteen back then. Perhaps, my current love of Radiohead and post-Radiohead bands was based on that early diet of PROG.

Anyways, given the limitations of the early recordings, poor transfer to CD etc., you really will need to audition many of your favorite recordings on any potential components, rather than rely on other opinions. At the budget you're looking at, you will quickly discover that some of your favorite music may not be listenable at this level (unfortunately). If you really are into stuff from the 70's, a very good TT will be likely necessary along with pristine albums. But, in the end you want to listen to as much as possible when you audition, as you would hate to spend that much and find that half of your albums or CD's are unlistenable once you make your purchase. (I would often take 30 or more CD's for auditioning to really see what certain equipment was capable of ... perhaps, it drove some owners crazy !!!!) As well, remember that your own tastes and preferences can change and I wouldn't want to completely pigeon hole my system for a single genre or a few artists, in case you discover newer musical tastes.

From my own experience ... I know many people thought I was crazy looking at some of the equipment I auditioned, as alternative rock, and rock are not felt to be worthy of such equipment by some. In the end, I am amazed how listenable most of my stuff is on my very revealing system. As noted above, the size and budget of the artist is often inversely related to the quality of the recording. I mean it can be tough listening to most U2 CD's (despite their millions and great producers [e.g. Lanois, Eno etc.]), yet some of the low-fi recordings from many alternative artists are just beautiful to hear through my Kharmas even though they were recorded on a shoe-string budget in some basement.