As system improves, do bad recordings sound worse?

In my experience,a bad recording is a bad recording.Better equipment might seem to help at first but the first impressions die off pretty quickly.Like I said this is my experience,others may differ.

Hi Bryon,

Here is another thread on essentially the same question. Quoting from therein:

(The question, posed by MrTennis): 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?

(My answer): 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.

Best regards,
-- Al

bad recordings should sound better but the differences between all kinds of recordings should become more apparent. most recordings should be listenable unless the copy is defective.

Thanks for the responses so far.

Maybe the recordings actually were not 'bad'. Something in your previous system MADE them sound bad.

Elizabeth - There's some truth in this, I think. What was paradoxical, though, was that sometimes what made recordings sound worse was an ostensible IMPROVEMENT to the system.

In the OP of a recent thread, I suggested one possible theory for this, namely, that the combination of highly resolving downstream components (e.g., speakers) with less resolving upstream components (e.g., sources) tends to result in the magnification of the flaws of the upstream components. Therefore, when a downstream component is upgraded, without a comparable improvement to upstream components, flawed recordings might actually sound worse.

...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.

Al - This captures my experiences during the second half (more or less) of my upgrade history, but not the first half.

Bad recordings should sound better but the differences between all kinds of recordings should become more apparent.

Mapman - I agree with this completely. I made a similar observation in another recent thread.