Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

The most important part of your system is the source for Everything starts there good or bad ,the signal once lost cannot be made up down stream,

I personally like Multibit,or R2R dacs  they sound very natural ,vacuum tube Dac also ,good design is what counts most.

digital cables the  Ethernet hub ,as well as Ethernet cables and usb cables can make a Huge difference . I am part of a multi state audio club and have been shocked to find out my AQ Diamond 💎 usb ,and Wireworld platinum 8 are detailed but flat compared to imo Final touch audio Callisto cable best under $1k in naturalness , I own this but moved up to their new reference the Sinope which truly is like Analog for digital cable and I heard too Shunyata , as well as Synergistic research ,those cables are more money and better in a area or two realism i willtake over ultimate detail by a few % points , Ethernet cables very important as well, I have both AQ Diamond 💎 as well as FTA Ethernet cables ,the uptone audio is a excellent Ethernet hub for under $1k ,the synergistic research hub is the best I have heard at $2k it is worth it ,I don’t own it Yet but planning on it. spending $3500 for a few digital cables is a lot of $$ to me but we’ll worth the expense .

we took 2 dacs rom Denafrips ,the dac at 1/2 the price was better sounding with these top cables the better dac had a Wireworld platinum 8 which is pretty respectable ,just to make a point on digital cables. 

I'll go out on a limb and say I prefer some reconding on a much lesser system.  A lot of Led Zep comes to mind.  I find my very good system tends to highlight just how poor a lot of these recording were.  I save them for my car.  

@pesky_wabbit 

  +1 

 Otherwise we would only be listening to test records and severely limited in our choices. 

I have found that as my system improved, excellent recordings/masterings sounded better, and the inadequacies of less-than-stellar recordings/masterings became more pronounced.

In general… a better system sounds better. The caveat is that there are two ways of pursuing a great system… really detailed or natural. If you pursue ultra detailed, you quickly makes bad recording sound terrible. If you take the approach to have a relaxed natural sounding system, then most recording sound much better… the better your system is the better the recording sounds.