Quality system, make poor recordings sound better?

My experience mirrors OP, Almarg ... In a high resolution system, one can hear the flaws in poor recordings. For me, the most obvious is compression, brightness and thinness.

11-06-14: Maplegrovemusic
can someone who feels as the op provide us with a recording you think is poor . i would like to play it through my system

Most Bruce Springsteen, Heart (Heart, Bad Animals ...), Liz Phair, Garbage V2.0 ...

Knight- Dreamboat Annie on Mushroom records, which I think is a KenDun master is actually a great sounding record.

The Dreamboat Annie masters were excellent. Nautilus did what I think was the best pressing of that album. Still my go-to for demoing Rock bass resolution(the synth & drum/Fender bass doubling on Magic Man)

there's some very good and interesting responses here but it would be nice if there were a few paragraph breaks for some of the longer ones

Katy lied by steely dan is a great example concerning this thread. I have always liked Steely dan and heard many times that album has problems. I just didnt understand until recently.

I upgraded my speakers, preamp and amp in a relatively short time frame finally moving to a class a amp and a great preamp from Pass. This album sounds a lot different and not better but worse. Mid range and voices too high compared to highs and bass. I thought, well maybe its just the areas that my system now emphasizes but after listening to about 100 other albums, i now recognize what others have said about this particular album. other Dan albums are just wonderful.

I can only come to the conclusion, the resolution of my system is now revealing the weakness or issues.