Is Recording quality the real culprit?

@searchingforthesound 

I don’t want to wonder into a fight, but an equalizer will do nothing for an over driven microphone, to much compression, or tape hiss. If someone wants to put EQ into their system, more power to them.

In my experience all recordings sound better on a good system than a poor system.

My system is pretty resolving and has cause me to understand there are a lot of crap recordings out there

Music is an art.  So is the mastering that goes into making recordings.  Everyone does it differently.  
 

Science and technology provides the tools used to both create and playback recordings.    That part is not an art.   There are right ways and wrong ways to do it.  
 

If it’s done right, you get to hear all the artistry that went into making a recording.   You can also then season to taste so that as a whole it sounds good to you.

I struggled with this for several years and finally came to the conclusion that it's more the recording rather than the equipment that gives you the separation and sound stage. I wondered why all sound engineers didn't record in audiophile quality to make it sound really good...... Then it hit me.... it isn't us the audiophiles who buy the most music.... it's the kids with not so good sounding equipment so they realize they don't need to record for quality. Another possible reason is to cover up the singing quality of quite a few famous singers who really don't sing that well so mediocre recording helps cover that up. When a famous singer has the backup singers singing along with them on most of their recordings, you know that is one.