Glad that we didn't scare you off with our barrage of thoughts.
To answer your questions, the quality of recording can fall into two parts. The original masters and the medium it's recorded on.
When I talk about the masters, the best example that I have is my old Rolling Stones hot Rocks CD. I have one of the original CD's from the late 90's. On my speakers, the best that I could describe it as sounding hollow, or lifeless, even tinny. You need to crank up the bass and turn down the treble and then it sounds almost right but not quite. On an ipod with earphones, it sounds fine.
Compared to all my Eric Claption CD's, they sound like Eric is actually sitting in the room with you and you feel the muisc all around you. That I consider to be a great master recording. Now, some recordings are just the way that they are. My Forgotten Rebels albums you just play loud and they don't have any dynamic range but then again, I don't think they were ever meant to.
Then you have the mp3 issue.. you will be hard pressed to get a 64kbs mp3 to sound good. I have heard some 128 that did sound reasonable, but the fact is that mp3 is lossy and when you loose something it's not the same as the original.
as has been said here before. Axiom speakers are very revealing, and reproduce the sound they are given very well. Give them a good recording and they will reproduce the wonderful sound with crystal clarity. Give them a sub par recording, and it will give you sub par right in your face.
When it comes to movies. I have yet to find a movie that I wanted to watch that didn't spend the money in making the soundtrack match the calibre of what was on the screen. I think that they seem to go quite well hand in hand. Now if you are watching a movie from a VHS tape, then you will be very disappointed. I mainly watch Bluray now and the DTS sound is far better than most and CD. Likewise, DVD movies have an audio track that has far more S/N ratio than a CD can offer and I have yet to find a movie that my speaker choice made me cringe.
Speaker placement can play a roll in what you hear. So can furniture and other acoustic modifiers. You can have the best sounding speakers in the world, and put them is an acoustically challenged room and they won't sound as good as they could.
You have to end up making a choice as to what you consider good enough for the time, money and effort that you are willing to put in. I am sure that there a many speaker options better than what I have, and likewise, I know I would need to spend thousands more to get them. But I also know that the increased level on enjoyment that I would get from doing that would never justify the cost involved. it comes down to a personal choice as to what is good enough for you.
I listened to the Studio line from Paradigm and didn't bother listening to anything above them as I knew I could never justify the cost of the speaker to the sound improvement they might offer and the level of other kit that would be required to make them sound their best.
