What bugs you most about sound quality?

Compression,definately. Watching most of my disks on a scope was pretty annoying; the average dynamic range was still less than a phono or tape could hold! Many pop disks have no more than 20db of dynamic range!!

I grant that this makes sense on pop records that are expected to be played in a car; with a back-ground noise level of at least 70db even a compressed disk is pushing the upper safe limit of human hearing.

I remember a singer by the name of Shawn Phillips. My wife was always going on about how good he was (she heard him live as a young hippy). Listening to his records and cd's made me think that he sucked; I couldnt hear anything interesting. Then, one day he came into town and put on a live show. My wife dragged my very reluctant ass down to see him. Well, out comes this aged-looking hippy who, as he is sitting down, asks "How many of you were dragged here by your Significant Other?". About two-thirds of the hands went into the air, including mine. Shawn just smiled knowingly and started playing.

In three seconds we were his. The subtle (and not so subtle) dynamics of his guitar playing and singing captured us immediately. This man knew how to use ALL the aspects of music to his advantage, timing, harmonics, dynamics and etc.

Yet what does the recording company do? It compresses the life out of Shawns music leaving only the harmonics and some of the timing intact. I call it music murder. He should get the same recording people that Patricia Barber has. And his recording engineer should get life.

Lack of bass and too bright highs. Although I think newer recordings are getting better in this respect.
Also a lot of rock/pop recordings seem to be filled with NOISE. I don't know if this is some grunge carry over but I used to love Rush. Their latest CD was so full of noise I could hardly make out any melody.
CS Lewis says Heaven will be filled with music and silence. Hell, and the future of our universe as we know it, will be comsumed by noise.

Had anyone ever heard of this happening?

I too had found purchasing compressed recording to be quite irksome and basically a ripoff. But in the last year, I've entered a pretty unique situation that I've not heard of before.

After only a few upgrades a year ago, I noticed most of my otherwise older compressed and otherwise mediocre recordings had new life. In fact, aside from a bit of digit hash in some of them, many of these formally very poor to decent cd formatted recordings now sounded near reference level.

The bass can be absolutely phenominal, soundstaging almost as good as I've heard, pinpoint imaging, the cymbals shining thru with an air around them (perhaps with a bit of hash but again it depends on the recording).

Some of the more lifeless recordings (non-audiophile grade) I have been thoroughly enjoying over the last year include Chicago's Greatest Hits, Al Stewart, Isley Brother's Greatest Hits, Jethro Tull, Grover Washington, Bob James, and most of my Alan Parsons Project cd's or even my wife's Amy Grant's Christmas cd. Most of the Alan Parsons cd's are pretty decent recordings anyway but are now very good, especially the cymbals.

Dare I mention I tried my wife's Culture Club greatest hits a few years ago and found it pretty lifeless and put it away within 10 minutes or so. I just put it in again a few weeks ago. The percussions on track 4 are as tight, deep, and pronounced as I've ever heard in my more reference-like recordings. Almost all of the other tracks are quite good as well. There are many other cds, but I see no reason to embarass myself further.

The Isley Brother's cd is perhaps one of the worst I've heard(before last year). I contemplated numerous times about returning it for a refund. I actually felt that a crime had occurred with my purchasing this cd. And now almost of the songs are so involving with warmth and bloom that people who listen to it are tapping their foot for the duration. 'Harvest For the World' is something else. The PR&T is in many of these otherwise flat and lifeless recordings.

Perhaps an even better example would be a Vivaldi Four Seasons cd my wife purchased around 1991 found in a bin near the Warehouse Records checkout counter for $4.99 (regular price). Again, flat and lifeless and lack of dynamics. Today, I'd put it up against many finer recordings. It will lose but it would still place a very competitive second.

When I invite guests over to listen, I never suggest anymore that they bring their better recordings, but now I always suggest they bring their older and worst recordings they wish sounded better. And they always seem pretty amazed at the quality of these otherwise worthless recordings. A reviewer/columnist was at my home to evaluate my system last summer. He had mentioned that he had purchased 3 different pressings of Al Stewart in order to find the best one, so I put on that cd and he was quite impressed with the sound and especially the bass on these older recordings. He took a stab at explaining why he thought it sounded so good.

There's only been a few recordings that appear completely unsalvageable on my system. Two of which come to mind include an old 1968 Grand Funk Railroad recording on cd and some of the songs on Tears for Fears greatest hits cd.

Now it's most always fun to load up an old cd and see what I've missed in the past. Sure there's plenty of songs I still don't care for, but it's almost never due to inferior engineering quality now. However, in my heart of hearts J.Geils will always sound inferior.

-IMO

heres a shocker....99.5% of all recordings in the history of popular music are not made to sound great on high end systems. they are mastered to sound good on the widest variety of playback systems possible.

I didn't know that compression was so widely dispised! If you really do have such a big problem with it, why not get a hold of a dynamic range expander/peak unlimiter and put it in your playback system?