greater resolution as an end in itself ??

Mapman - Tonal imbalances bother me too. It is very tiring to climb the stage and adjust their amps at every concert.

Analogously, ask yourself: can an HD video have too much resolution? Not if your goal is to be able to see everything as clearly as possible. then again, some of the things you see may be dog ugly or you may not find attractive or perhaps the HD equipment is of inferior quality and introduces noise or distortion that limit the results at resolution X. That is the equipments fault, not the fault of higher resolution source.

Audio is pretty much the same way.

it is my hypothesis that greater resolution, while possibly "improving" the sound of well-recorded cds, makes poor recordings sound worse. thus, is greater resolution a boon or a bane?

That was my initial expectation during the years when my system was evolving from low fi to mid fi to somewhere in the middle of the high end part of the spectrum. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not what happened.

What I found, at least with the classical recordings that comprise most of my listening, is that just about any recording manages to get at least a few things mostly right, and as my system improved and the things that were right about the recordings were reproduced with greater realism, my attention would be drawn by that realism to what was right about the recordings, and not what was wrong.

That said, though, I do find that a disproportionately high share of my listening is to recordings that are on audiophile labels or are otherwise high quality. And as Elizabeth said, if I had a $200K system it might be a different story.

Hey Elizabeth, you do your system a dis-service by referring to it as "in the mid-fi camp." :) To most of us, I think that "mid-fi" = mass market brands; "middle high end" would be more like it!

Regards,
-- Al

"...my attention would be drawn by that realism to what was right about the recordings, and not what was wrong."

Al. Thank you - that answers my question I asked at the beginning of the thread "why now with better system I don't need to adjust sound between CDs?".