Why should a brutally honest system be automatically aligned with a hyper-detailed system when in fact they are mutually exclusive? Or at least should be. A brutally honest system will reveal far more musical detail including distortions (system shortcomings) than a brutally dishonest system or the more rare hyper detailed system would.
A musical performance consists of exactly 100% detail. Never more and never less. That implies there is no such thing as 101% detail. So aside from the the relatively rare component that is indeed zipped up or hyper detailed, I would think one would want to get as close to 100% of the detail embedded in the recording. The closer you get to the 100% detail the more abundant and natural are the warmth, bloom, harmonics, etc. that you get.
If you are experiencing what seems to be an abundance of poorly engineered recordings that seem flat or lifeless, grungy, overly detailed, or shouty, it's simply because your system is the victim of numerous distortions (which all are to one degree or another).
Any distortion whether electrical or mechanical will cause most all of the finer nuances and detail to smear to the point of dropping off into the noise floor and raise the noise floor so that much of the musicality of a presentation becomes inaudible.
Sadly, the vast majority of the magic or beauty of a performance lies in the low level detail and thus much of the believability of a performance is inaudible and is anything but believable. Thus leaving only a small percentage of the info embedded in the recording audible, (the bulk but not all of the high level detail and just a remnant of the low level detail).
Changing to a speaker or component that seems warmer or fuller most always adds a coloration that has nothing to do with getting closer to the original performance. As is usually the case when trying to cure the effects rather than the cause. In fact, because such products add new colorations to mitigate old colorations or distortions, I would contend that such 'warmer' components actually take you further away from the 100% detail of the live performance rather than closer to it. Even though they might make inferior systems and recordings seem more palatable and less fatiguing.
Especially since such a component would do nothing to recover the volumes of missing or inaudible detail which was the original problem anyway.
In other words, this has nothing to do with listening analytically or critically, or even just immersing yourself in the pleasure of music no matter how distorted it sounds.
As you probably know, there's real pleasure listening to the quality of magic of a given live performance and there is potential for real pleasure in listening to the quality of magic of recordings of same given live performance.
That's assuming of course that the reason you've invested your money in a 'high-end' system and participate in 'high-end' audio forums such as this one is to get closer to achieving that goal rather than seeking insight as to how invoking The Force might help convince yourself indulging in a 'high-end' audio hobby has nothing fundamentally to do with listening to the quality of the sound of the music.
To answer the original question, you should find that the vast majority of all CDs, including Redbook, contain enough music information to create superior musical presentations, even those we might consider to be our most inferior engineered recordings. It's the distortions plaguing our systems that keep us from hearing the vast majority of that information embedded in the recording medium.
-IMO
A musical performance consists of exactly 100% detail. Never more and never less. That implies there is no such thing as 101% detail. So aside from the the relatively rare component that is indeed zipped up or hyper detailed, I would think one would want to get as close to 100% of the detail embedded in the recording. The closer you get to the 100% detail the more abundant and natural are the warmth, bloom, harmonics, etc. that you get.
If you are experiencing what seems to be an abundance of poorly engineered recordings that seem flat or lifeless, grungy, overly detailed, or shouty, it's simply because your system is the victim of numerous distortions (which all are to one degree or another).
Any distortion whether electrical or mechanical will cause most all of the finer nuances and detail to smear to the point of dropping off into the noise floor and raise the noise floor so that much of the musicality of a presentation becomes inaudible.
Sadly, the vast majority of the magic or beauty of a performance lies in the low level detail and thus much of the believability of a performance is inaudible and is anything but believable. Thus leaving only a small percentage of the info embedded in the recording audible, (the bulk but not all of the high level detail and just a remnant of the low level detail).
Changing to a speaker or component that seems warmer or fuller most always adds a coloration that has nothing to do with getting closer to the original performance. As is usually the case when trying to cure the effects rather than the cause. In fact, because such products add new colorations to mitigate old colorations or distortions, I would contend that such 'warmer' components actually take you further away from the 100% detail of the live performance rather than closer to it. Even though they might make inferior systems and recordings seem more palatable and less fatiguing.
Especially since such a component would do nothing to recover the volumes of missing or inaudible detail which was the original problem anyway.
In other words, this has nothing to do with listening analytically or critically, or even just immersing yourself in the pleasure of music no matter how distorted it sounds.
As you probably know, there's real pleasure listening to the quality of magic of a given live performance and there is potential for real pleasure in listening to the quality of magic of recordings of same given live performance.
That's assuming of course that the reason you've invested your money in a 'high-end' system and participate in 'high-end' audio forums such as this one is to get closer to achieving that goal rather than seeking insight as to how invoking The Force might help convince yourself indulging in a 'high-end' audio hobby has nothing fundamentally to do with listening to the quality of the sound of the music.
To answer the original question, you should find that the vast majority of all CDs, including Redbook, contain enough music information to create superior musical presentations, even those we might consider to be our most inferior engineered recordings. It's the distortions plaguing our systems that keep us from hearing the vast majority of that information embedded in the recording medium.
-IMO