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

Showing 1 response by nilthepill

Absolutely. A good system by definition reproduces what is on the source material. If the material is crappy, sound should come out crappy, otherwise it is not a 'good' system. Take, Bose system for example, it will make everything sound okay. In your car.

Sometimes I don't realize this fact and when I put on a recording that isn't very well recorded, I begin to doubt my system and start to worry about what could be wrong. My home system is Classe/Dunlavy. But then my boxster OEM system does not fall in this category. It sounds good sometime and bad most of time :) regardless of source.