wrote in message
oups.com...
-- most recommend going to a hifi dealer and trying
out different speakers and amps.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

All I want is to hear music as if the musicians were standing in front
of me playing their instruments.

Oh, is THAT all. Why didn't you say so? Ahem. You're asking the
impossible, or at least very expensive, depending on how discriminating you
are.

So... is this a lot to ask?

Yes.

Isn't it really the *only* thing to ask?

No.

Is sound reproduction that subjective that no one can agree on a
particular system that will do this?

It's not really subjective. See the magazine The Absolute Sound. Absolute.
Pretty objective.

Or maybe, are we talking about a
$100,000 system here to be able to be that accurate?

Right.

All I want to know is, with my measly $500-$750 (or less?), isn't there
a specific receiver/speaker combination that will produce what I want
to hear?

Like I said, it depends on how discriminating you are. But at any price
below a couple thousand dollars you're going to have to make some serious
compromises. The trick in audio is to figure out what your priorities are,
and pay only for those things. For example, is the bottom octave very
important to you? (20-40Hz) In some music it doesn't even show up. Is
concert level volume (massed strings of a full orchestra playing fff)
important to you? Is detail or dynamics more important? etc. Then you can
pick something that sounds close enough, depending on your wallet.