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.