Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

You have a very nice system. You probably listen to many recordings and are totally satisfied. If you listen to garbage it is garbage and not your system, plain and simple. Enjoy your system and the music..

Started tape trading in u.s. u.k. Germany, Sweden,

been sent 3,4,5,6 gen demo and live shows.

most sound horrible, but that’s part of the fun of it. 
 

cassettes get play on my,Panasonic ex-c45, and the National.

a great sounding lil beast!

A great system makes a mediacore recording sound more mediacore.

A great system makes a mediacore recording sound more mediacore.

It is not so simple... Why?

Because there is the sound perception,

And with it the musical evaluation...

When the recording is "bad", you lost many information which are confused and missing ...But in a very good audio system in a very well controlled room, you will, you easrs/brain will decipher more acoustical cues from the recording and with the help of the room acoustic control, the recording improved acoustic translation will reveal a bit  "more"  about the way the recording is flawed and what is missing or confused...

Then the recording will not be perceived to be more  merely only mediocre but in the opposite more "interesting" and more informational acoustically .... Then you will forget more easily the acoustic because your music evaluation will be more easy...

A good system ONLY in an ordinary room perhaps will make mediocre recording more mediocre why?

Because good audio systen in uncontrolled room are often too much  "analysing" and the acoustical details kill the musical forest... But the same system in a controlled and well treated room relatively to it, will reveal more about soundstage, imaging, dynamic, timbre perception and even the ratio LEV/ASW will be better... Then your attention will focus more easily on the music ...

The acoustic perception being improved, musical evaluation will become easier...

Then in conclusion: If an audio system made mediocre recording always worst, of two things one : your system is too analytic or badly flawed or of your system is good but the room is not well treated nor well mecanichally controlled and tuned for this specfic audio system....A good system in a bad room is easily harsh sounding, or too analytic, too resolving and not enough in phase with the room acoustic bass will not be ideal nor clear for example etc....

In a word, a good system in a well optimized room dont make "bad" recording good one, but make "bad" recording " interesting" one, more easy to decipher then it will be  way more easier for your focus and attention  to shift  on the music forgetting what is distorted  information only or missing  in  the sound...

I’ be been puzzling over this for years. One thing to help is to remember everyone on the other side, engineers, mixers, etc have all the control over this ‘Art’ they create. However, they can compromise for their perceived audience. Like any Art, a movie may be perfect for the cinema, but viewed from home may lack engagement or miss subtleties. If you can build your system toward coherence, soundstaging and try to get the bass right, then most recordings sound great. Some reveal real surprises, much as the artists intended. If the system is too imbalanced it can misemphasizes all those subtleties as irritants which is indeed hard to listen to. Most of these are dimensional cues and reverberations of the instruments, most ‘good sounding’ recordings isolate everything to remove any unwanted reverberations then add it back artificially. Musicians in a real room and all those reverberations actually sound good, so almost all blues and jazz and classical sounds fine. Rock is the culprit.  A car for example may be a good place to listen to that stuff because there’s so much competition you tend not to focus in those subtleties which make it more enjoyable.