High Performance Audio - The End?

Huh? Some of my favorite music is on crappy recordings. A good system just allows you to hear further into the recording be it bad or good. Contrary to some opinion here, there are some excellently recorded popular records. Many of them are trying to give you a different experience than being at a live recording. It is part of the art form. Amused to Death (Roger Waters) is an example. 
It is really a mater of priorities and how much you are willing to spend.
You can build a system for about $120,000 that is very close if not SOTA.
Spending more than that will not get you much farther. You might call that the point of diminishing returns. 
As a young audiophile you start with what you can afford and over time you evolve your system until you get where you are happy. That point does exist. If you wind up with piles of money and want to buy $145,000 amplifiers, well why not? Are they worth that much? Hell no, but if they make you happy why not? Most of us can't go that far but trust me on this, you don't have to. It is much harder to build a SOTA system on short money and I have heard some very expensive not so hot sounding systems. 
Does the quality of an individual recording mean anything? Not if you like the music. There are loads of audiophile "candy." Super recordings of bad music. You can buy those if you want your system to sound good.
Right now I am listening  to a half speed mastered version of The Captain and Me. The best of both worlds:)

Listening further into bad recordings is not enjoyable IME — the warts just get easier to hear. Yes, there are some good pop recordings, but sadly not many. When I want to listen to poorly-recorded music I like, I just fire up my Bluetooth speaker or earbuds as I can more easily just enjoy it for what it’s worth without feeling like I’m chewing on tinfoil. Anyway, that’s how I deal with it.

That dude knows next to NOTHING.

Solidly lower end HiFi advice.  :)

Listening further into bad recordings is not enjoyable IME — the warts just get easier to hear. Yes, there are some good pop recordings, but sadly not many. When I want to listen to poorly-recorded music I like, I just fire up my Bluetooth speaker or earbuds as I can more easily just enjoy it for what it’s worth without feeling like I’m chewing on tinfoil. Anyway, that’s how I deal with it. 

Then you're not doing it right. Don't blame the recordings. My system is so revealing no two recordings sound the same. The differences between them all is clear and easy to hear. They are all enjoyable.

When Michael was here he had me play Fleetwood Mac Rumours on the 45 reissue. He said, "That's gonna be hard to beat." Then I put on my White Hot Stamper. He said night and day.

That's what its like when you're doing it right. When you really are revealing, and not whatever non-revealing crap audiophiles like to call revealing. That's one way you know your system is genuinely truly revealing: everything sounds really good- and the really good ones even more so.