Bad recordings and high end audio

+1. @jond involvement is the thing. 

I pulled up a copy of Stairway to Heaven from Qobuz, it is remastered an 24bit/96khz. Sounds very good. But then I don’t have a ear bleeding kind of system.

Someone recommended a Pass amp. I think that would be a great choice, a pass x350.x would give the Maggie’s the most punch you are going to get from them. Couple that with the best Audio Research tube preamp and you would have the punch, detail and musicality of a great system. Assuming you have good sources of course. I owned a Pass x350 for over ten years with a ARC preamp and ribbon speakers. I have auditioned Maggie’s many times set up per my request. They sounded spectacular… just can’t get early exposure to electrostatics out of our mind, can we.

"...just can’t get early exposure to electrostatics out of our mind, can we..."

Maggies are planner magnetic or quasi ribbon if you prefer, not electrostatic. The more expensive models have ribbon tweeters. .

Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys have  given me a ton of awesome suggestions and comments. I apologize as I did not stick a budget out there. I unfortunately do not have an unlimited budget. I would like to try and keep the rest of the system under 10k. I have a turntable to use. That would be the top of my current limit. This is a tough as I would like to do it less expensive then that. There are so many comments I like to acknowledge but can catch everyone. I did look at the Pass Lab stuff and thought they were out of my price range. Now I did not look at used stuff, I am open for that but would seriously be looking at your guys guidance. I can see myself collecting and searching for nice pressing as an extension of this hobby. Tape was always my dream when I was young and I see it is still around and expensive lol. I do have a tendency to overthink and over analyze. I live in Southeast Michigan. They have just one Magnepan dealer in the area. I did drive to another store that was a few hours away that said they had maggies and only had 1.7’s set up, they neglected to tell me this was the only pair they had and then really pushed B&W’s. I am going to read through your responses again and see if I can provide more information if needed.  I appreciate it each response! I am very excited to get this journey going. 

They are just trying to play music that sounds good on their speakers which will not be led zeppelin because led zeppelin requires a speaker that will play it all meaning all kinds of music which most audiophile approved types will not.