When will there be decent classical music recordings?

"I have yet to come across any classical recording that grabs me in the way it should, or could."

Clearly you have done very very little listening to classical music in recordings where even in boxy mono a Toscanini, Furtwangler, or Mengelberg could grab you by the throat let alone all the way up to the Mercury and Living stereo recordings which are astonishing and jaw dropping.

I understand what you are saying by a blob of sound.

But the better your equipment becomes(which can take a heckuva lot of money) the more impactful and transparent it becomes.

You can listen to Paray's on Mercury Saint Saen 3rd in its most recent cd incarnation and find it overwhelming. I can't stop listening to it.

I recently got an outrageously expensive great cartridge and even 70s vinyl pressings of Reiner's Lt. Keiji and Ansermet's Pulcinella are tremendously moving to almost bring tears to your eyes. I know that with more space and more money it is capable of sounding better and then there is reel to reel... But most of us have space and money limitations.

And there are those who are into original acoustics on victrolas and find them unearthly in their presence. True time machines.

If you want anything better you'd have to hire Dutoit and Montreal to play in your back yard. 

That's why I have a second system.

I listen to a lot of historical recordings and I cannot listen to them on my primary system. Too revealing.

Box sets I love: The Reiner, Westminster Legacy and the Archive Analogue. All good examples of exemplary sound. And artistry. And we're not talking digital sound here.

A disc I use for testing (read about it by a reviewer) is by Trondheimsolistene 'in folk style.' Grieg and some wonderful contemporary composers.

Of course if I had mono blocks each with their own power conditioners and 70k speakers with a reel to reel playback system and a large room there would be no end to the possibilities of great sound.