Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?

For me it depends on what makes a mediocre recording mediocre, by the way, I’d judge a large proportion of recordings as mediocre. I’ve found mediocre recordings that formerly had timbre, sound staging and/or were less resolving have become much more listenable. A highly resolving system with more natural timbre or tonality will uncover information previously unheard, and presents recordings in a more forgiving manner. Recordings with these defects become more involving.

 

Quashed micro dynamics is one defect that’s been heightened by a more resolving system. I find far too many digitally mastered recordings to suffer this malady, I can only take these recording in small doses, consecutive plays of these recordings causes me to lose interest, have to return to known high quality recordings to return to involving listening session.

 

Poor recordings remain poor, no help can be found for these.

Great post and i concur with each words....

IMHO, the answer to this question depends on what you think sounds good. If you are a purist, who strives for a neutral system that reproduces honestly the source material, then a lousy recording will sound lousy. Lousy recordings can be compressed dynamics, mediocre soundstage , poor frequency response, etc…no neutral system will change any of these things. However, some systems, either knowingly or innocently to the  owner may modify some of these things, perhaps subjectively to the better , to the owners delight. As always, the hobby is about the owners pleasure, so different stokes for different folks…

I listen to all of my music on hand (vinyl collection).  There are definitely some better sounding records than others.  There are incredible sounding records, too.  And there are a few that are just terrible sounding.  I still listen to all of it.  However, those lesser sounding records just sound better to my ears when the volume is adjusted accordingly.  That is to say, for lesser quality recordings I listen with the volume lower than I do for the high-quality recordings.  It seems to work better for my ears and allows me to have a more enjoyable listening session.

My system is quite good and is revealing, and my room is fairly well treated.  I get from the records what they have to offer.  Again, I adjust the volume accordingly and enjoy my record collection in its entirety.

Definitely yes, but better recording always will sound better. :)

I have a big investment in my front end. But the most significant improvement came when I added another $10K to my $3K cartridge. (Analog only system-Lyra Atlas SL) Granted, the rest of my system was up to the level of the Lyra.

It pulled so much more information out of the groves that almost every LP now, at least, sounded interesting and listenable. Now, only the rate exceptional LP sounded “bad”.

IME, there is no question that the better the system, the better the sound.

However, I also believe that a system must be at a certain level to reap these rewards.