High Performance Audio - The End?

Steve's point, and it's one I've seen mentioned many times previously at shows and demos, is that better more revealing systems will often only serve to make most recordings sound worse.

Exactly!

An AM car radio serves songs better than a highly revealing system where the recording is poor.

Such a waste of Money!

I listen to mostly classical music, which you might think would be a natural for accurate reproduction of real instruments in a real space.  But even here, producers generally have a hand in “shaping” the music.  In the early days of stereo, an orchestra would be recorded with just two or three microphones placed in an optimum spot above or in front of the musicians.  This did  produce a natural sound which a high resolution audio system could come close to reproducing. Gradually, however, producers endeavored to “improve” the final sound by placing several microphones at various places above instrumental choirs, thereby giving them more control over the final product.  This multimiking caused several abnormalities in the natural sound. All sorts of distortions we’re now possible.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because talented engineers have produced some wonderful results using this method.
I do  believe a high resolution stereo system should be. able to sound good on the majority of recordings. After all, even the worst engineers are not out to produce aberrant sounds.  Of course there are great variations in quality. But a good balanced audio system shouldn’t produce extreme distortions.

@dougeyjones

what is 'EDM'??

One important factor here is that we are all very neurotic about our equipment and crazed to buy all sorts of quirky "improvements" that are really cool but probably do nothing. It is best to listen to the music and not the system. 

It's an interesting point, but all it will take is a new form of digital recording and playback and then it's back to square one.A scary proposition.