Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?

I agree with most of you guys even if you are saying opposite things! I for one do not give much about PRAT and other marketing buzz words and I want my system to show what's in the recording yet still make it enjoyable - overall.

HOWEVER, the Pearl jam bootleg recording I was exposed to last week was really inaudible, or should I say, very hard to appreciate as it did not sound like live recording to me, totally muffled and cacophonous. Without knowing about its resolution or else at the time, I immediately thought this was a case of highly compressed files. Jaybo: how could a decent system make these files "good" if they are, by definition, of lesser quality than the average definition that our systems were designed for? think of it like cars and roads. The average car is designed for average road qualities. If you take that car and take it in serious off-roads condition, it ain't good at all. It does not mean the car is poorly designed, it is simply out of the range of application it was designed for.

Is it possible there is a compression range that manufacturers use when designing audio gear? Is it possible that those bootleg recordings sit outside that range?

perfectionist is right. your stereo should accurately capture the performance and the recording itself. most recordings are meant to sound 'like recordings'. does anyone really think bernstein or the beatles and thousands of relavent recording artists were/are even concerned about 'air' and 'warmth' and all the other bs terms that equipment mongers use. a good stereo system makes you want to own the world's largest music collection. if you spend all your time worrying about each recording being a sonic wonder, you need a doctor, not an upgrade. to paraphrase woody guthie...'some men rob you with a gun, others with interconnects'.......for the most part neither man winds up being a scientist,an engineer, or even a music lover.

Gargage in, garbage out...
It all starts with the recording process and no amount of money you throw at a system can change the original recording.

sorry....one more thing, the origin of prat is from a marketing dept. you can't argue with an intangible_marketing 101

if you buy junk out of the bargain bin thinking it is real music, you are apt to buy awful speakers thinking they are well engineered.

beheme-it isn't a so called 'audiophile recording'. like most modern recordings, it is however meant to be enjoyed on a quality playback system. the 'notion' that 'the better a system is-the worse most cd's and lp's sound' is about all any consumer has left to hang their hat on, when they find themselves with tens of thousands of dollars in equipment that they can't enjoy anything on. accurately reproducing the recording and enjoying the music are not different goals. no recording engineer sets out to make peoples ears bleed. unfortunately most high end speaker designs are not made to be listened to for hours on end. they are built specifically to impress a potential buyer using an audiophile quality recording. one that does not really 'test' the speakers at all. loudspeakers that do not favor one frequency over another, and maintain that balance with any ss or tube amp make just about any commercial recording listenable. ar, allison,hales,avalon,ohm,gradient,shahinian,castle,harmonic precision,harbeth,snell(the originals)chapman,enigma,totem,duntech,etc. are just a sample of speakers that are well engineered at all pricepoints. if you can't enjoy the history of recorded music from the dawn of high fidelity until today, you've got a problem that no amount of tweeking and component changing(other than speakers) can solve. those pearl jam recordings are not only historically significent-they rock. giving up the history of rock music alone based on a demo with a patricia barber or jennifer warnes cd(which don't sound bad even on a boombox)is nothing short of a bad purchase.

A bad recording is a bad recording.
All a good system does is make a bad recording sound even worse.
Go by a boom box and the thing will sound silky smooth.

Bad CD's sound worse on good equipment. For example, I made the mistake of buying a few Laserlight releases on sale from Tower Records. They sounded bad in my car, but really attrocious in my music room. I ended up throwing them in the garbage.
Jay

If it's a professionally done recording and you're playing it from at least a 16/44 source (or some loseless equivalent) then something is wrong with your system and/or your setup if you're finding a significant percentage of new recordings are "unlistenable". A good system will show the flaws of commercially oriented recordings, but it shouldn't make them sound like crap.

EQ and tone controls can correct for tonal imbalances, but nothing can undo excessive compression.

I think it would help greatly if you had bass and treble control......i am finding out that high end means only playing a few recordings and not being able to play most........so what is the point of paying alot of $$$$$ to not be able to tolerate most recordings???

I have Krell gear and i hear from a relative,"you need a mixer", "not enough bass" and it pisses me off.

Spend the big bucks and then everything sounds like crap.

Jaybo: interesting point. Is the issue of resolution one that we should care about then? if the complete concert is about 200MB (thus about 120MB per 1 hour CD), how can this be an "audiophile" recording? I think I am missing sthg here. I like your perspective though as it goes against the "grain"!

First of all, welcome back Slappy! Of course their is one option that is taboo in many minds, equalization.

I am not sure the issue breaks down as simply as "realistic and accurate" versus "euphonic." I think your system has to do PRAT well to be consistently enjoyable across the musical and recording quality spectrums. There are a lot of other factors, including the voicing of the speakers. But I am still trying to figure out all the issues and the right balance between them.

if your speaking of the legal so-called bootleg, commercially released, live pearl jam recordings, the answer is THE BETTER THE SYSTEM, THE BETTER THEY SOUND. they were intentionally left ruff around the edges, but were indeed made for quality hi fi playback. aside from female voclas and small chamber recordings, most hi end systems are put through a reality check with large orchestra, and live rock and roll. most fail........are they audiophile quality...of course not....but are they worth owning and playing...you betcha

Yes. Case in point...Robin Trowers' Bridge of Sighs, one of the greatest rock albums known to man, IMO, is absolutely un-F'ing listenable on a high-rez rig.

I can't disagree with a good system being more revealing, but on the other hand one of the traps of this hobby is having a system that pushes you into "audiophile" recordings, or otherwise limits your enjoyment of the huge catalogue of great music available. A really musical system will of course sound great with good recordings, but should also allow you to relish music in whatever form available. If you find yourself listening to "Famous Blue Raincoat" and 10 other Lp's/CD's in your collection over and over again, something is very wrong.

I've heard (and had) gear that made bad recordings unlistenable. Playing bad recordings through my current set up is more than tolerable. I actually have a fairly large collection of recordings that are recorded very poorly- and while my system never fools me into thinking these are gems, they are still listenable and never harsh or fatiguing.

Will

Slappy, my friend is actually a Chef in a respected restaurant in Montreal so I will pass your comment to him, I am sure this will wipe the residual smile he may have thinking my system is mediocre!!!

I agree on the garbage in/garbage out factor. If you have a revealing system it will reveal the garbage or reveal the quality of what's being played.

If a bad recording sounds good on a good system, wouldnt that indicate the system is somehow coloring the music to make it less offence?

I'd say crap in, crap out.

Imagine Crap in, T-bone steak out.
That would make the whole digestive process a little less appetizing.
"Here, eat this piece of shit. Very good. Yeah thats right, the peanut too. Now, come back later and crap a t-bone on my plate."

A bad recording should sound bad on a really good system. I have a led zepplin CD that sounds ok in my car but is so compressed that It makes my system sound like a transister radio.

Mark

IMHO, a system shold reflect what the recording has to offer. Not under or over emphasize what is bad or good.

Sure, one could argue that your system accurately reproduced the source material. Would you prefer a system that lied to you by making everything sound sweet, if that was even at all possible?! Happy listening!