Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?


A friend of mine came home with a few CDs burnt out of "official" bootleg recordings of Pearl Jam NorAm tour...the sound was so crappy that he looked at me a bit embarrassed, thinking "very loud" that my system was really not great despite the money I spent. I checked the site he downloaded from...full concerts are about 200 MB on average. I guess I am dealing with a case of ultra-compressed files. Should I be proud that the sound was really crappy on my set up?!!!!
beheme
One of the goals I set for my system was to "successfully play any recording of any musical genre regardless of recording quality". My system does that yet is revealling enough to tell the diffrences in cryo treatment facilities of the same model power cord and to be used for Beta testing for a couple high end small audio firms. Of course, a mediocre recording won’t sound as good as a great one. However, in a well set up system, great performances will convey the spirit and intensity of the music regardless of recording quality. As system quality goes up it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve this. I've spoken to Sean & Albert Porter about this subject. Mr. Porter has told me that his system can do what mine does (but at a whole different performance level, of course). He also agrees that doing so becomes increasingly difficult as system quality inncreases. After a change and/or addition, it's taken him sometimes a whole month of tuning and tweaking to get the system to perform in such a fashion again.

That, my young (and not so young) padwans, is the real challenge in the audio hobby.

With psychic power and primal intensity,
Hi Tvad nice to meet you. I have a couple of questions for you. Why was the production quality of the first generation cd's produced sounding duff? And has our hi-fi systems improved so much that early cd's now sound bad?
I also consider myself a compulsive music punter also, by the way.
i value my ears too much to listen beyond 85 db.

... what i am trying to say is it depends upon preference and your choice of music.

Good point.

My point was that most real world instruments/orchestra/band go significantly louder than 85 db and a good sytem should replicate this stuff too (not just the soft music)
nobody has defined what a good system is.

if one assumes it means as accurate as one can afford, then such a system is at the mercy of the recording.

a bad recording can sound brutal and a great recording can be sublime. thus, one may suffer the extremes of bliss and misery.

for me, i don't want to suffer when listening to bad recordings. i believe in the law of the golden mean.

life is too short to have unpleasant experiences. if it is not hifi then so be it.