Recording quality...

Most audiophile labels’ CDs have reverse polarity and many recent LPs but especially CDs have been overly compressed. The trend is not your friend as dynamic ranges have become ridiculously low. No one escapes, not hi res downloads, not SACDs, not LPs, not even the high end Japanese SHM CDs and Blu Ray discs.

Thanks for your responses to this.  I greatly respect all of your opinions.  

Yeah, have to agree most the other posters here. Most of the older analogue recordings sound better to me. 

This has always been a challenge. We assemble incredible sound systems  and yet source material is just as important. Tell you what, I'll take those old Ampex recordings any day. Just listen to "Time Out"  from Dave Brubeck. This was recorded in the 50's and yet simply sounds outstanding!

My go to source for the best version of a particular CD (or LP) is the Steve Hoffman forum. Contributors often have listened to many versions of a given CD and will rank them for sound quality. Interestingly most are not newer recordings. The closer you get to the original master.....in most cases....the better the sound quality. Good luck with your search.

mikeydee, I would say that if you're struggling to confine yourself to the last 5 years worth of recordings alone, then you are definitely doing something wrong. I think maybe you have possibly built the wrong kind of system for your tastes in reproduction...not that that would be the first time that's ever happened or anything. But, on the face of it, I'd say that there's something about your gear, or system or setup that is not currently offering you the kind of performance you're craving and that your penchant for blame on the recording quality is actually misplaced. 

It's well known that some systems are more forgiving toward lesser quality recordings than others, that some drivers or speakers are more musical or that some CDP's, or TT's or carts are more forgiving than others. Musicality is a legitimate pursuit in reproduction and shouldn't be given short shrift or anything. Don't fall blindly for the old advice that the best systems are necessarily the ones that magnify the difference between the best recordings and the worst...if that were strictly true, then everyone would be in the same position that you're in - but they're not.

People occasionally make complaints about recording quality, it's true, but I really suspect it is usually a system-dependent playback problem, not so much truly a recording quality problem.

I would say that a good measure of the real success of a system is how much justice it does to the recordings that you most want to listen to - otherwise, your system has you held captive - it is telling You what it is that you want to listen to.