Well if said "high end" brand isn't actually as high end as they claim then yes you'd have a terrible time.
But anyway this is the hierarchy of what is important imo and with workable experience and evidence to back it:
Room/Speaker placement dialed in as best as possible=>Quality/If you like your audio files=>Amp stability=>Inherent balance of speaker with directivity being a big strength coupled with actual full 20 to 20kHz reproduction. The rest are just near unimportant to the sound in any truly audible way.
Oh also there's no such thing as sounding like a live performance (that's an oxymoron)