Are most recordings so bad it's not worth spending large on speakers?

Recording quality has always varied from awful to excellent! Same for speaker quality! 

When I think of lifelike, words like clarity and dynamics come to mind...and these words apply to the sound produced by a 10 piece brass band when you are 20' away and to a rock band in a club when you are 20' away.


It seems to be pretty rare that the recording process of a live event can capture those dynamics and clarity without clipping and/or harshness.  Therefore, whether the music is recorded from a live event or in the studio, the engineers are somewhat constrained with taking the input and making an output that sounds good...and won't have us jumping for the volume control like many of the Telarc recordings do....and how often do we want to actually listen to music at home at 100db which is often the level of live music when heard from 20' away.

The compromise is to find speakers/electronics that sound both good and as close to live as possible....in your room and with your music choice.

In that regard....there are lots of great choices and champions for each choice both here and on Audio Circle.....and you don't have to spend $14k...probably not even half that amount...and they will sound really good for both music and tv.

The first rule of Morrison Audio is you never talk about Morrison Audio! ...  :-)
I must say, he has rather strong opinions on audio, I would wholly agree with some, not at all with others.  He has a single minded obsession to recreate a live performance aura, and to that end, he is not totally wrong that the vast majority of recordings are not recorded in a fashion to allow that, no matter how many times people here throw around terms like imaging and sound-stage. They are multi-miked, and mixed. What you hear is what the recording engineer wants you to hear, and any sense of sound- stage or "imaging" is a created illusion. He is somewhat correct that the types of speakers he sells and designs do not necessarily offer a benefit, since the illusion was not created with speakers of his design, they were created using monopole speakers. I think, though, he may be short-selling himself a bit as omnidirectional speakers really do appeal to some with any music content.
I did want to clip one part from his website, as it is worth repeating (and given how often these terms are thrown around with just about any tweak). Sound-stage and image is almost exclusively speakers and room, which is why many who actively work with audio, raise an eyebrow at many a claim.

Depth and Image February 20, 2015

The terms depth, image, soundstage etc. are bandied about in describing a systems ability (or inability) to recreate a reasonable facsimile of musicians playing their instruments in your listening room. Another way of describing this illusion is to say that the speakers "disappear" sonically. In order to recreate this illusion there are a few simple rules.

Rule # 2 The electronics in the system play a surprisingly small part in creating the illusion. It takes a wretched power amp to totally screw things up. It is not necessary to spend vast sums of money on exotic thermionic based units.

Replace "recordings" with "room acoustics" and I suddenly agree with Morrison.

The question of spending however to my mind is a separate issue. The quality of components and design is not that well coupled to the finished product in my mind.

I will say that it has been a VERY long time since I felt the super speakers were worthwhile. Lots of great < $20k speaker brands and makers out there.

There are a few really bad recordings around, but certainly less than 5%. The rest range from good and fun to listen to exceptional and mind blowingly mesmerising through the right system. 

Buy good speakers but you need to ensure that your source is up to the task, because the quality of the source is exactly what you’ll hear through your new speakers. 

Finally soundstage and imaging are both in the brain, created by psychoacoustics based on the sounds reaching both ears. To get great imaging requires great accuracy of frequency, amplitude and phase (timing). If there are too many errors, your brain gets confused and can’t create the imaging you’re looking for. The errors are basically the sum of room, speaker, amplifier and source distortions of the recorded signal