How can you tell the quality of the recording?

Just keep focusing until you hear something bad. It's gotta be there. After all, they are CDs. Sometimes I find it difficult to ignore all that music when I'm focusing. Happy Listening

Does all this mean, you can like a bad recording and not like a great recording? If so, I don't get the question either. Beethoven's 9th-furtwangler - 1942, comes to mind.

Let me interject a little logic here. IF, your system HAS EVER played a recordings that met all the positive things you are seeking in reproduced sound, even JUST ONCE, that means that the system is capable of playing at the highest levels. So if the next recording does not sound up to expectations, IT HAS to be the recording. Unless your system has a grudge against Jazz, or classical or tom waits etc....... then it's personal.

'I disagree with Rok2id'

How dare you! :)