I agree with the majority of responses, a bad recording is bad no matter what it is played throuh. This is why I have not minded spending extra $$ for remastered cd's of my favorite albums.
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?!!!!