Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?

Jaybo:
"your mindset" does not determine a musician's timing, nor does it determine your system's ability to convey that timing accurately. If you think timing in music = "farfegnugen", you and I are indeed way beyond the point of debate. I know from personal experience what I mean by good timing in music. AND, I know when an audio system faithfully reproduces good timing and when it does not. If you have yet to experience these things, I hope you soon get the opportunity. As I said earlier, you made sense in other things you said.

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.

does a kid hear prat from his favorite boombox? does a drunken dancer here it from a 'way-loud' pa in a disco? do i hear it in my favorite recordings? are there good eric clapton records with no prat? are there bad ones with it? is it put into the recording by the musicians or the engineers? prat is not created by a playback device. its an emotional reaction 'you feel' when you are enjoying music with your-own-bad-self. 'crossroads' by cream on any playback device has prat if your enjoying it.

IMHO. A 'good system' won't make 'bad recordings' sound bad. A 'good system' will make 'bad recordings' sound good. Its all to easy to blame the least expensive item in ones' set-up ie a 'Cd/Lp' as being the culprit for the pain on the ears. No one will ever admit that their expensive piece of kit is really an expensive piece/s of sh....doggie doos.
These are just my own personal views from personal experience in the past.
Crank it up.........

a stereo system is as strong as its weakest link. most stereo systems sound pretty good with good to very good recordings.

it is the better stereo system which can sound good with bad recordings.