Does Every Track Sound Great on Your System?

No:  not every track sounds good on my system.

A revealing system makes a crap source sound even crappier.

A few nights ago I put on the Sony SBM (red book) remaster of Born To Run and it sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Then I put on the MFSL (red book) Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and it was somewhat better, but not super crazy better. Then I put on Sprinsteen’s Ghost Of Tom Joad and it was a whole lot better and then I put on MFSL (SACD) Cowboy Junkies/Whites Off Earth Now and all brightness and compression disappeared and the sound stage blossomed laterally, vertically and to the fore and aft. All tracks are not re-created equally on my system.

@toddalin  , are you referring to the Japanese single layer SACD?  I have that also, but I've only played it once.  For some reason I haven't been too impressed with the single layer imports, but it could be that I wasn't listening to it on a "good night."  I am not in the mood for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on a regular basis, but next time I'll try the SACD and see if my feelings have changed about it.  I really enjoy Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.

Poor recordings sound gritty and raw like they were supposed to I guess.   But they still are enjoyable.   

I agree with you that oor recordings sound gritty and raw (the vibe I was getting the other night was bright, shrill and compressed) but I am not sure that they are supposed to sound that way.  But yes, I agree with this also:

Great recordings sound excellent,  so good that you get a sense of the "room" ambiance . 

I I have a lot of CDs and several SACDs,, and the SQ I hear from them ranges from poor to "I like it" to mind blowingly excellent.  

@toddalin  , that is not the one I have--my SACD Yellow Brick Road is the SHM single layer.  (tonight I played what would have amounted to the first of two LPs) and maybe it sounded better than the old MFSL red book/maybe it didn't.; it didn't blow me away.  However, Funeral For A Friend was thundering and penetrating and I loved that much of it.  Who did the remastering of your 30th anniversary Deluxe Edition?

. . . oh, and as far as Funeral For A Friend, @toddalin  , I usually listen after I eat, around  7 or 8 pm or so, so while I am preparing dinner I have the tubes warming up, and then as I am eating I have my system playing some background at a low level, so when I went back and plugged in Yellow Brick Road tonight, Funeral was ready to thunder.

So who released the 30th anniversary edition, @toddalin  ?  (Just curious is all.)

And no, both of my remastered Yellow Brick Roads are single discs (76 minutes long, I believe) and do not include any bonus tracks.  No acoustic Norma Jean.  My only other Elton John CD is a DDD that is live in Australia with, I think, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  It does have Norma Jean.  I haven't listened to it in ages.  I have it pulled out in its slot about an inch as I am going to give it a spin next session.  As an aside, I used to like Elton John a lot, and I think that there was a time in the the late 70s when I probably had every Elton John 8 trcak except the self titled (my sister had that LP).  I still wouldn't mind having a good sounding remaster of Don't Shoot Me--Texas Love Song is great.

Thanks, @toddalin  , come to think of it, I do remember losing a bidding contest on ebay for that SACD remaster.  I am afraid that I am a tad OCD, and at the time I saw that, I thought it would be nice to have a "audiophile" copy of Yellow Brick Road that was closer to the double LP format that it was originally released as.  And I still would rather have it in a two CD set as opposed to all on one 76 minute disc, but the things I get OCD on come and go and now I don't feel as strongly about that particular one.

Out of curiosity, how does that particular SACD remaster sound?