The Best Sounding Systems can Play Loudly with Low Distortion

OK, if we are talking symphonies using an orchestra as the question then this puts a very different slant on the question. I have had season tickets to the symphony for over ten years and have attended hundreds of concerts. By and large symphonic concerts are not loud. Most of the time are interludes between brief very loud crescendo. So, you are asking about the rare crescendo. A great system must be able to handle them. But most of time you will be listening to music and much lower levels.

I mentioned recently, my seats were 7th row center and I would go home and set my system to reproduce the whisper from the silence of some of the great openings to the crescendo to be what I heard at the concert. I use this setting to start with when listening to classical music... or other where I want to duplicate "live in the concert hall". Obviously there is variation in recording. 

But still... 95% not loud. 

When I first saw the question... I was thinking typical mixtures of jazz, rock, world....etc. 

@helomech sometimes I wonder how many Agoners have actually heard/demoed top revealing systems to actually know what you are talking about. 

the definition of the best sounding system is the one you have and I don't (Old Mayan proverb)

sometimes I wonder how many Agoners have actually heard/demoed top revealing systems to actually know what you are talking about. 

Right! And then some properly implemented room correction on top of otherwise reference resolution. 

Volume vs. distortion to determine your systems value is like saying the best cars drive the fastest.  There’s a lot more nuance to driving than speed.  In fact it’s very easy to make a car go fast.  How it feels and handles the road is more important to me.

In this analogy, the levels of distortion would be the “handling” of the road. 
 

The problem is that the vast majority of domestic systems begin to struggle handling the road once the SPLs reach remotely convincing levels. With a truly low-distortion system, you can reach near live performance levels and it causes no considerable fatigue. Those same systems sound better than most at low levels too.