What you say may be true for some, Ken. I also find myself lost in music sometimes via car radio, FM tabletop, etc. But, for me, I would say that it is not a more pleasurable experience. It is definitely "way better" on my main system.
However, about Holt's Law, no, he was right. But, you have to go back a ways to his heyday and the LP era. I still have a lot of those, unplayed for decades now, and for the most part some almost inverse relationship between sound quality and musical quality existed. Not always, but it seemed the rule rather than the exception on labels like Sheffield and Reference Recordings. It extended into the CD era. I could name a lot of names of my own fool's gallery of musical duds, which were allegedly great sounding. But, I grew weary of it, and started to realize that raves by magazine critics were just not credible about "wonder" recordings, or equipment either, for that matter.
Today, life is very different for me. I think on average sound has improved on commercial recordings vs. the Holt era. Reproduction systems are better, too. At least, mine is a lot better. Yes, there seem to be issues in pop music - loudness wars, etc. Newer recordings still vary in quality due to engineering differences, but not as much as they used to, in my experience. I could be wrong, but it seems there is just not room anymore in the marketplace for recordings that emphasize sound quality at the expense of musical quality.
Personally, in my classical music niche and like our friend Kal Rubinson, I have discovered a sub niche within that of hi rez Mch recordings made over the last 15 years or so. Some, that is many but not all, of these are the best commercial recordings I have ever heard by a fair margin. And, fortunately, most combine high musical quality with superbly engineered sound quality.
In classical music, some tend to quibble that X performance of, say, the Bach B-Minor Mass on CD is "better" musically than Y performance on SACD. But, I no longer find debates of that sort of much interest or validity.