Speakers and system for compressed recordings?

I can echo Bondman' experience with lesser recordings and some of the design attributes of speakers that can help make even most lesser recordings very enjoyable on the terms that the engineers and producers who created them intended. Even holds true for 80-90% of modern loudness wars type CDs that many audiophiles may find unlistenable otherwise, although these offer some additional challenges in terms of power and clarity needed to deliver lots of loud dynamics and transients clearly and in a digestible manner that can often actually be quite tasty.

Bondman, be carefull, it's easy to confuse coincidence with correlation. Despite some other wonderful qualities, I've heard the full range ESL ML's exhibit just the opposite phenomenon. It could just as easily be due to one speaker providing more or less detail than the other, or something else all together.
I am fully convinced that many of these modern pop recordings are fundamentally flawed, and without some kind of electronic manipulation, an accurate system will expose them as such.

I agree with Kbarkamian...I think it's somewhat dependent on your system. Poor recordings were more problematic on past systems I've owned. I lucked into not having as big a problem with my current rig and there are very few albums that I cannot listen to. Not sure what it is about the system that helps...but it has a knack for making music sound coherent, where the timing and balance are just bang on, so you hear where the music is going and that kind of overshadows other stuff. I guess you have to find a certain strength that pulls you in regardless.

That said, any decent hi-fi will probably make some of the worst recordings sound pretty bad. As long as music has some room to breathe then I'm usually good. When that's gone and all you have is a big wall of sound, that makes it a lot tougher.

Donald Norths speakers were very very good and made in a sense even compressed recordings very much pleasing and lively. It seemed as the compression was lesser in a way.
However, lately it seems his page is down when it comes to loudspeakers:-(
Personally, i would like to live with the Studio.

I don't know how to rectify the problem other than starting a second system, and throwing money at it. I just wish there was a magic switch on my preamp for 'return to the psychedelic sixties'. A guitar player friend of mine did mention setting up a P.A. system, and the range expander idea might apply to that set up. I have listened to a couple of P.A. systems that sounded okay but fell far short of giving me goose bumps.
Also, I have listened to the same sound qualities at audio shops with systems far exceeding my own. Good recordings sounding breathtaking and compressed recordings making the mega-buck systems' sounding like a clock radio. So I know it is not just my system that sucks at rock music.