Eric - have you ever heard a horn system do percussion - stunning realism - percussion on my Klipsch Cornwall's sound better than on any other speaker I have yet heard, except for even bigger horns. At least a couple of percussionists I know would agree.
Nnyc, as for your latest question, in my experience the digital recording of large ensembles where there are many more microphones (even sometimes one on every instrument, believe it or not) are usually terrible sounding. I would agree with Rballdude that this is normally the fault of the recording itself, not the system playing it back. As I have said here before, if I had a dollar for every audiophile who has heard a bad recording job but thinks that something must be wrong with his system.....
IMO the best, as far as most realistic sounding, orchestral recordings were made back in the 50's and 60's when they just stuck a couple of mikes out in the hall (or perhaps far above the orchestra as Mercury was fond of), and there was as little mixing as possible. Part of the reason for this is because then you get a much better sense of the original recording space, and it's ambient noise, and of how the music filled it. More mikes are not usually better, they usually greatly diminish this sense of space, which is very important to the realism.