During the time when I just about lived in "high end emporiums", we were jammin with all ARC electronics and Thiel speakers, when a customer came in wanting to audition a Rotel amp. Before the Rotel amp was inserted in the mix, all the instruments in the music occupied a place in space. You could point to the trumpet or sax, and all of the odd percussion instruments just popped out of the air, while the bass was solid as a rock emanating from it's place in space.
Once this Rotel amp was inserted, the music became one big "gumbo soup" again. My point is, even with "gozillion" dollar speakers, if you don't have a complete line up of "gozillion" dollar electronics, you ain't got squat.