Should a high end system be flexible, or demanding?

This is philosophy and how we approach systems.  There are folks here who are happy to alter their musical tastes to just audiophile recordings and relegate other music to the car.  
These folks are criticized for listening to their system rather than listening to music. I disagree as these recording deliver an extraordinary experience.

li personally am not in that camp but I get it. I like to listen to these types of tracks from time to time.  At a root level, I am in the flexibility camp and my system needs to sound good playing the music I like.  If it doesn’t there is no real point.  
Mono recordings from 30s and 40s might be extreme but so pretty much want most rock, jazz and classical recordings to sound good on my system.  There will be exceptions.  Some recording are just poorly done.  But if it is a great system, an average recording should sound very good to me.  

I'm not saying a system should make a bad recording sound good, but at least enjoyable musically.

I agree that we need to stop listening to the gear and listen to the compositions they are playing. Our culture is far too skewed to the tech and not the musical culture itself.  The musicians the composers even the politics that drove the music of the time.

An audio system that cannot play all music, all recordings superbly, is not much of a high end system. There are fundamental weaknesses, shortcomings in a system that cannot sound terrific with all genres of music and all recordings.

The fact is that most audiophiles' systems are not nearly as good as they think. They blame the compressed music, the genre, when in fact it is their rig that lacks. 

Another thing is that people may not even be aware of how variable recordings are and think their system is the solution to make recording X sound the way they want it to, not how it actually is. Then one is stuck on the upgrade merry go round getting nowhere trying to make things into something that you want it to be but in fact is not.

douglas_schroeder

The fact is that most audiophiles' systems are not nearly as good as they think.

Really? Do have any actual evidence to support that "fact"?

They blame the compressed music ...

And for good reason!

... when in fact it is their rig that lacks.

It seems to me that most audiophiles are reasonably happy with their systems, even as they may seek some improvement. But that's just my casual observation - I don't claim it as "fact."