The Best Sounding Systems can Play Loudly with Low Distortion

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. 

All subjective. Some people don't like to listen loudly.

Totally agree with @ghdprentice "Being fully satisfying at low levels is a much harder feat and is the mark of a truly great system..."

Recently upgraded my KUZMA STOGI S Tonearm to a KUZMA 4POINT9 Tonearm and one of the first things I noticed is how well it played at low volumes. I own a  Audio-Technica AT-OC9XSL Dual Moving Coil Cartridge with Special Line Contact Stylus and was looking to upgrade it until someone more knowledgeable than me told me that no cartridge upgrade would come close to what I would achieve with the cartridge I own mounted on the 4POINT9...

A lot (most?) of us were exposed to loud stereos before we experienced good stereos. At an early age we learned to equate loud with distortion, and can hear surprisingly loud, distortion free music without realizing how loud it really is. We don't get the signals that originally told us it was "loud". That was an interesting discovery for myself and several others over the years, and probably contributed heavily to my tinnitus. 

Not convinced that low distortion equates to a very low black noise floor or higher fidelity.