What makes up an

Detlof, I don't take the Stereophile list seriously:) You know how many dealers can tell you stories about customers walking in with that as a grocery shopping list and stubbornly refusing to consider advice about alternatives or incompatibilites? You could, with ease, put together an atrocious system with just those Class A components. As I'm sure many have done.

Mrtennis: I think that the listener can never be taken out of the equation and acheiving the objective standard of a hierarchy is futile. Different people experience the same event with a different perspective. There are physiological differences, tastes, perceptions, prejudices and different levels of satisfaction entailed in all that. You would have to have a perfect human being as a point of reference to build the scale. What sounds great to a speaker designer voicing his product may sound like fingernails on the blackboard to some regardless of the specs as Detlof states above. I personally have never been partial to Krell products. Great stuff and nothing against them, but just not to my liking. And they out-spec my teeny 2A3 amp in every way. But I'll never part with that because it gets me to where I want to be. That, to me, is how I would define 'high-end' to begin with.

RESOLUTION, THREE DIMENSIONALITY, AND SUBTLE NUANCE regardless of cost. Many expensive systems can't and some modest systems will!

Chasmal,
agreed, although 3-dimensionality per se is not quite enough, the placement of instruments and voices in that sound field must be stable and more or less correct. (Phase-stability).

What to my mind could be added to your list is BLOOM, the aura around instruments which is fiendishly difficult to reproduce and PRAT (pace and rhythm and articulation), that which will make your feet tap or make you want to dance. (has to do with the correct rendition of transients)

does anyone feel insecure if one's stereo system does not satisfy the requirements for the designation "high end" ?"

status is one thing, enjoying one's stereo system may be another.

Getting off the subject a bit.

Does some of the audio systems we own sound better than some live performances we hear in terms of sound quality? I know an audio hi fi system can not normally reproduce the emotion of a live performance (at least nothing I have heard personally) but does home hi fidelity sound better than a public address system?

If you attend a live rock or pop type concert in a stadium, concert/theater hall or even in a smaller club setting do you actually hear instruments separated from each other or do you only hear the sound field emitted by the PA system used?

Another consideration for home audio is that a typical room in the average home creates a close monitoring situation.

What about the equipment used for some of these live events? Are they of the same quality and price tier of equipment made for home use?

The typical PA gear you find does not seem to come near the price of the hi end audio gear.

Recording studios may be a different story. Studio gear can get into the money.

Seems to me the only time you can hear true separation is from acoustic instruments that are not amplified through a common PA system. Once electronics and amplification are applied it seems that you start losing separation except what you get through further electronic manipulation in the form of panning sound to the left or right channel.

Just my thoughts as a lay person.