Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

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. 

I have to come down strongly as a no on this one. A poor recording is a poor recording. The system can't put anything there that isn't there. It is my belief that the measure of analog is analog. That is you don't really see the value of analog so much from comparing it to digital recordings as in comparing good analog recordings to poor or indifferent ones. I think this is what really makes you appreciate the artistry of producers and engineers in getting sound onto an analog medium. I recently had a general upgrade of my system that particularly improved the analog side, and it is quite the experience to listen to a record you know of old find it sounding better than it ever sounded before. But when played through the same equipment you will find that there are recordings that just fill the room and there are others that lay there like a lump. One thing I've been doing as I revisit my LP collection is listening to the English folk music I love, and I still love the music but by and large they really weren't that well recorded. On the other hand, while it may just be an effect of what's in my record library, what I've been particularly impressed with are record from the Warner/Elektra/Asylum menage, For example, Paradise and Lunch by Ry Cooder, and Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits. Actually, one of my more unusual analog appreciation moments was listening to an old Alan Sherman record and being struck by how good it sounded.

On the digital side, I once tried something I think of as the DAC/CD Death Match, when you take an early digital recording you know to be pretty dire and run it through a good DAC to see if it can be redeemed. My match was a Denafrips Ares II vs. the extraordinarily harsh MCA Broadway Gold digitization of the original cast album of Porgy and Bess circa 1992. I'm afraid the CD won that one.

yes I totally agree garbage in garbage out, I have a $60,000 system which includes a Sim audio p8, Sim audio w8, esoteric P10 transport, Wyred4sound 10th anniversary dac, monarchy audio up sampler, and for the speakers monitor audio platinum 200 Gen 2, a friend of mine brought over some of his CDs that were not so well recorded and boy could you tell the difference from other CDs that were well recorded it wasn't even close.