Is Recording quality the real culprit?

Comparing car audio to a HEA system with vinyl playback is ludicrous!

When I was a young person over half a century ago I thought that a bad recording was doomed to provide an unsatisfying listening experience too.  Then I got a pair of Stax electrostatic headphones, SR-5s.  One night, after enjoying Workingman’s Dead in its glorious Wally Heider produced stereo sound, I put on a Chess reissue of Howling Wolf…More Real Folk Blues…and was flabbergasted that these crude, raunchy, monaural recordings, often displaying gross mic overload, sounded thrillingly alive and immediate.  I learned that a truly linear, cohesive, distortion free transducer, like electrostatic headphones, could let any recording shine.  This was before punk rock, of course!  Having speakers that do this trick is a more challenging task.

Excessive compression is easily number one culprit, luckily I don't listen to a lot of this overly produced drivel. Perhaps recording quality has helped subconsciously steer me towards less commercial artists. Still, I'd say unlistenable recordings few and far between, I can usually hear past the warts and get into the music.

I'd suggest the ability to listen to lesser recordings says as much about us as our systems. Quit the critical analysis of sound, accept it as presented, once you get past this you can enjoy the performance.

Before the age of streaming we were at the mercy of the recording quality. 

With streaming, and millions of recordings so easy to access we can populate our favourites folders  with music that is wonderful and well recorded as well.

For example, This week I wanted to listen to some Ella Fitzgerald. A tidal search offered up well over 200 albums, including the Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie! which Analog Productions released as a 2 LP set.

Now I have a bunch of Ella to listen to without having gambled on buying any albums that sound poor. Audiophiles and music lovers have never had it so good!

Considering some people believe a digital signal can sound better or worse depending on a cable or "connection" material, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some of them would believe their system could improve the sound of a poorly recorded song (but they'd be wrong about that too).