Can a great system make a mediocre recording sound good?


I spend a lot of time searching for well produced recordings as they (of course) sound so good on my system (Hegel 160 + Linn Majik 140 speakers).  I can't tolerate poor sounding recordings - regardless of the quality of the performance itself.   I was at a high end audio store yesterday and the sales person took the position that a really high-end system can make even mediocre recordings sound good.  Agree?

jcs01

Showing 1 response by clearthinker

All systems are imperfect.  That is they cannot perfectly reproduce the signal fed into them.  Therefore the sound that comes out will be judged either 'better' or 'worse' at reproducing that signal.  The systems that are 'better' will be improving the sound of the (poor) recording.

Therefore a system could be designed that would process poor recordings to sound like good ones.  But the changes made would render the performance different from the original recording.