Speakers and system for compressed recordings?

A revealing system can easily highlight a poor recording's flaws. However... it'll also highlight it's strengths. You may have to look/listen a little harder for them, but I've found even some of the worst recordings have a good trait or two.

There are very, very few recordings I can't listen to through my system. I don't buy music to listen to my system. I bought my system to listen to my music. There's a difference, believe it or not. If you can't listen to a great album because the recording's horrible, you may want to reevaluate your priorities.

Again, there are a few albums I just can't listen to on my system. They're very few and far between. I listen to more rock/classic rock/metal than anything else.

"Crines of the Century" compressed? My Speakers Corner LP sounds amazing. I do understand your pain with compression but I find that some recent rock music is compressed and a fair amount of late 70's to 80's stuff is really hard to listen to. Some Kansas and Journey fore example is really hard to listen to even though I love the music.

Of what I listen to Dead Can Dance - Spleen and Ideal, Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire and even more Yngwie Malmsteen with Japanese Orchestra sound really bad on everything. The last one is digital recording, I just can't tolerate it on my stereo and believe it or not prefer to listen to it on computer through monitor's! built-in piece of junk plastic kind of speakers or through headphones.
Other than that eveything is listenable.

It could be a coincidence, but nearly everybody who is complaining about the sound of the recordings hasn't listed their system here on Audiogon. Could it be that those who have listed know something about putting together satisfying systems that the unlisted don't? Just harmless speculation.

The sonic variability of "classic" rock is well documented, but compared to any pop/rock recording of the past 5 years the earlier recordings possess a good dynamic range and sound only mildly compressed.

Perhaps, a dynamic range expander might work for you? DBX, RG and Rane are some that have made them.
http://www.rane.com/g4.html