Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

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.

My perspective on this topic has somewhat changed over the past few months.  I think all of us have recordings that we consider to be stellar, others that we consider to be poor, and others that that don't warrant a strong opinion either way.

If I want to show friend what a truly poor recording is I pull out a couple of my Josh Groban CDs that I simply cannot listen to anymore.  Ironically, one of them was actually one of my test CDs that I used when making my first "audiophile" type of purchase.  I know cringe at the pain that I must have caused the salesman that sat on the couch and listened with me.

In any case, I have a several other CDs that I very much enjoyed with my original gear which was an Integra receiver that I still have along with my current Focal speakers.  They were some of my go to recording for enjoyment.  Every time I made upgrades to my system these recordings always seemed to become a little less enjoyable.  I figured that it was just that they were poor recordings any my system was becoming resolving enough to expose them.

Then with my most recent upgrades that include rolling tubes, upgraded power cables, and upgraded interconnects my system really went to the next level.  What surprised me is that the recordings that seemed to always suffer from upgrades became wonderful to listen to again and are now back to being some of my favorites.  My Josh Groban recordings still sound like junk.

I think my Integra receiver has the edge when it comes to making poor recordings sound good because it has the digital processing capability that really seems to benefit poor recordings.

To summarize, I have had several recordings sound worse and worse as I upgraded and then unexpectedly the magic returned.

I think we all have recordings that we use for testing purposes and I'm thinking that these particular records might be an indicator of system synergy.

An audio system can improved by increasing the details and being more revelatory can make some bad recording worse because the sound shape become better cutted...

It is normal...

But the more improving effect, the ultimate improvement, toward a balance and more neutral impressions all over the frequencies will make the bad recording no more worse but more "interesting" by his abilty to manifest not details in greatest numbers not clarity, but naturalness of timbre experience, a more realistic palette of colors and their shades...

Then all recordings manifested new acoustic cues coming from the recording itself, bad records stay bad but are more listenable...Best recorded albums stay the best but reach a new peak of effortless realism...Best records and bad one gain weight ...

complicated subject, not strictly GI/GO but close enough to it to make finding a happy medium a protracted and almost [but not quite] Sisyphean task.  you need a system [not just a speaker setup but your equipment and room] that accentuates euphony in a useful way. in a large room, properly set-up Vandy 1Ci or 2Ce speakers will make harsh recordings sound markedly less harsh, at not a great cost to ultimate clarity, but NOT in a small room where one can't be at least 10' from those speakers with those speakers not further than 3' from any wall - in this circumstance poor recordings sounded shouty and harsh.  the local mag hifi stores found their vienna acoustics speakers big sellers for a similar reason, folks with money and big listening rooms found them to be mellow but clear enough, with a wide variety of music. these speakers didn't image quite as well as the vandys but had a somewhat wider sweet spot. the speakers i settled with, a pair of thiel cs.5 minitowers, struck a good balance plus are surprisingly forgiving of poor room acoustics/room dimensions, they sound generally on the sweet/mellow side of neutral, and they image excellently no matter what, with minor image width/density differences noted upon their degree of toe-in. my maggie SMGs also were among the more mellow sounding speakers i've had over a wide variety of music. they did not seem to sacrifice a lot of clarity in well-made recordings, on the best recordings they presented "another room within the room" type of reality, like their larger brethren. these speakers also did not require a big room, a typical spare bedroom was enough for them.