Bad recordings and high end audio

If you have the money go for Pass I currently run my 3.7i with a 250.8 the sound is outstanding. I picked up a gently used one and have had no problem only pleasure and enjoyment from the great combo. I saw the combo 3.7i and Pass won best of show a few years back which pointed me in that direction.

@daydream816- you have identified one of the challenges in this hobby- finding good copies of LPs of music that you like, rather than listening to "audiophile" recordings of music with good sonics that has no appeal to you.
Some of this is generational too-- there are audiophiles that listen almost exclusively to classical music, but that is literally a dying breed (and most classical records, with some exceptions) are not considered very desirable in the market today.
Leave aside running tape, which is a pretty expensive proposition for a lot of folks, not just in the hardware, but in the cost of the source material; this is a subject that @mikelavigne could probably address better than me, based on his own journey.
There is a decent sized segment of the audio community that is always trading tips on the sound of different pressings, Zep included. In fact, I probably have more copies of "challenged" records than I do of good sounding records.
Among those challenged records, there are differences--sometimes there are copies that sound dramatically better than others (e.g. the "RL" cut of LZII that you mentioned is one- preference is given not just to the cut, but the plant that pressed it-- Monarch being considered the most bombastic sounding). This takes you into the morass of seeking out more desirable pressings and using the RL/Monarch cut as an example, you will pay for the privilege, given inflation in the used record market. For some, this becomes a hobby unto itself.
I have a pretty good main system, and listen to a lot of different music--including a lot of the heavy hard rock/post psych/so-called proto-metal (which is what LZ tends to be grouped in today): Leaf Hound’s Growers of Mushroom has long been a 4 figure record as a UK first pressing, Lucifer’s Friend-self-titled on German Philips is of the same ilk and there are probably hundreds of bands from the period with a similar sound.
This opens up the possibility of exploring more, different music within the same genre--and yet another pursuit- for more obscure releases. (I would not put Leaf Hound in the obscure category only because it is a known "grail" due in part to price). Many people are savvy to the original UK Swirls of the first four Sabbath albums-- that label had some amazing (and weird) releases that command money today, but there is some cool stuff that is worth seeking out: e.g., Patto, May Blitz, and a few other bands in the "heavy" rock category, along with a pretty big roster of "deep" prog rock, e.g. Cressida, Affinity, and jazz rock, like Ian Carr, Nucleus, etc.
The better your system, the more differences you will hear among various pressings. Most of the original Vertigos are good sounding.
There is no easy answer to the question you pose- there are millions of records out there to be heard. Part of the journey for me has been one of exploration, not only of LPs from bands I know, but mining the vast catalogs of music that were unknown to me.
For the last several years, I’ve been listening to soul jazz and so-called spiritual jazz- post-bop, small combo jazz played by deeply accomplished sidemen who, in the ’70s, turned inward and composed and released music on smaller labels that drew on the black experience in America. Some of it is now super collectible but there’s a huge amount of material to be explored.
I can recommend generally the Tone Poet reissues---more offbeat older jazz albums that have been reissued with some care and are relatively cheap and for the most part still in print or easy to get.
I think this becomes a long, convoluted journey of self-exploration. I now listen to music that I would have considered cacophonous not too long ago. But it interests me and it’s not just good sonics, but a sort of fascinating time capsule of early funk and jazz, mixed with spoken word.
The learning curve is in some respects endless, but this is part of the pursuit for me, having less to do with finding gear, or records that sound good just to show off the system.
Treat it as an adventure!
Bill Hart

 

If you want a speaker that sounds every bit as good as a Maggie, and then some, AND is super easy to drive, listen to this guy. https://youtu.be/7RxRTFx6Cd0?t=342 Bear in mind he loves Maggies.

 Thanks for that video link. I enjoyed that interview.  The potentials of a tweeter array to provide better dispersion control and higher sensitivity without the need for a waveguide have fascinated me for a long time. I'm glad to see Tektron successfully implementing such designs at affordable prices. If I were in the market for a set of speakers right now I'd be interested. 

Good recordings will sound better and poor recordings will sound worse.

Be careful here. It should read: Good recordings will sound better and poor recordings will sound a lot better than they would on a bad system.

A good system let’s you hear what is in the recording. A lesser system won’t. It’s not always prettty but for me its almost always interesting to learn how all recordings are made differently and no two sound exactly the same.
To take this to extremes I digitize and stream old 78s on my system and even those are a revelation though nobody would claim these are good recordings by modern standards. On some there is almost as much surface noise as music. But the music is there, it’s very old and it’s very interesting as a result.