Isn't it really about quality of recording?

Certainly there is wide variation in recording quality, but IME system quality has great impact on all recording qualities. A great/good system can't make poor quality recordings sound good, but it can make a much larger variety of recordings sound better than with lesser system.

I have over 2500 cd rips, these are recordings I've owned in some cases, well over thirty years. Point is I've heard these recordings over many years with different systems, some portion of these recordings I thought unlistenable with prior systems. With streaming system improvements I've made over recent years, many of these recordings I thought dead  have been brought back to life. For instance, just the other night I listened to Deep Purple's, Shades, 1968-1998 4 cd box set from 1999 for first time in a long time. I long considered these recordings pretty unlistenable, small sound stage, extreme panning, pretty poor timbre, compressed dynamics. Well I chose 1st cd, so early 1968-69 stuff, what  a revelation over prior listens, the added resolutions/transparency of present system vs. priors made this rather mediocre recording come alive in listening room. Sure the inherent limitations of recording remained, but I was now fully engaged where this couldn't happen prior. And this exact thing has been replicated many times over past few years, new life to formerly thought dead recordings.

Bottom line for me is as system improves so should estimations of recording quality. A good/great system should be able to engage you with a wider variety of recording quality than lesser systems.

jumia

The dealers don't wanna talk about Recording quality no one seems to want to talk about it and why is this?

Huh? There are plenty of discussions here about recording quality and providing high quality recordings is a whole industry. Some of us even make our own recordings, which are especially helpful for evaluations.

Could not agree more! I own both vinyl and cd's that make my system play like it cost a million bucks and others that can make it sound like a Best Buy closeout! Some equipment may be more forgiving to poorly recorded/produced material, but in the end it still sounds like *** to me.

Good equipment helps, especially speakers and room acoustics. Yet with a bad recording, even the best equipment can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Not only are many recordings bad, different recordings can be bad in different ways. Even "good" recordings can have wildly varying bass levels, for example.

If one wants to play only audiophile recordings, there is a fairly well defined target. If one wants to play a wide variety of recordings, sooner or later, an equalizer will be in the cards.

Hi Jumia,

I think your point will or won't make sense depending on the type of music listener you have become. There are a lof of musicians who listen right through the equipment and even the recording quality and all they hear is the performance.  Their brains and ears are wired together

Some audiophiles can hear a system regardless of the room.  I cannot.   I can't do either of these things.  I need a quiet room with controlled reflections and smooth bass response or I find my brain has to work too hard to enjoy the music.

To each their own.