Most forgiving high end speaker 10k-20k?

OHM Walsh fit the bill except cost is $1000 to $7000 or so depending on room size and options.

I like Onhwy61's advice!

Speakers that are designed explicitly to be highly coherent through the mid range (where most of music occurs) and fit into the room well without overpowering it should work best. Find that first, get them tuned into the room optimally, run them off a well matched amp and tweak the sound from there if/when needed with the rest. There are many less expensive speakers that can fit the bill.

Also you have to manage your expectations when it comes to recordings. They are what they are, not what the listener wants them to be. IF you want to enjoy music on a good system, you have to keep this in mind. No good system will make a lesser recording sound like the best, so do not expect to throw money at the problem with that as your goal.

Having taken this approach, I find 85-90% or more of most anything I listen to on my rig, vinyl or digital, to be enjoyable and involving these days. I have two separate systems running speakers in 5 different rooms (and a deck over the summer). It's all good, but it took a lot of thought and time even more so than funds to get there sooner rather than later.

"With great recordings it is fantastic but with poor recordings it brought out all recording flaws."

Audio dealers love to hear things like this.

If the flaws exist, they exist. IF the system filters these somehow to make the flaws sound more tolerable, you can be sure it is doing the same to the good stuff in the music as well. Works kind of like make-up. Take that for what its worth....

Counter to intuition perhaps, lesser recordings sound best when played on a system that is clean and highly free of distortion top to bottom. THat allows the more subtle good things to play and tip the balance towards the good. My estimate is that 80-90% of the recordings most people listen to are good enough to affect a music lover who cares about sound quality.

Now if you are one of the breed that music cannot be enjoyable unless the sound is perfect. then you are scr---d to a great extent perhaps, because a relatively small % of recordings approach perfection. They are what the producers want them to be. You can like it or not, but that is what recorded music is. It ain't perfect!

Tell us more about your room and listening preferences and I will attempt to provide an end to end recipe for a rig that can deliver the goods but is also "forgiving" for moderate cost.

Detail can't happen without accuracy.

Accuracy can be pretty or ugly.

An accurate image of a pretty girl is pretty.

An accurate image of Medusa ain't so pretty.

What happens to the pretty girl if you apply the same tweaks necessary to make Medusa presentable?

So clearly accuracy and detail is desirable but still can be a double edged sword. Recordings are what they are. They typically range from mostly good to not so good, but few worth listening to are the audio Medusa, ie few have no sonic merit at all.

There is an up and down side to almost everything.

"This discussion has reminded me of how glad I am to have tone controls."

Treason!

I bet you have picture quality controls on your HD TV that muck with the pure natural picture quality that would exist otherwise as well!

Not to mention all kinds of fancy pre-configured settings on your digital camera that make pretty pictures even in low light but muck with the beautiful natural washed out dimness that would be captured otherwise!

:-)