... POORLY RECORDED SONGS THAT ...

The Sweet! Now, that is the one pulled from under the bed. I have to go and buy something from them to hear if it still moves the way it did then.

I absolutely love "God Foder" and "Are You Normal" from Ned's Atomic Dustbin. But the SQ on both of these CDs is horrible. I rarely listen to these on my home system. But I do enjoy them on my car stereo and also via iPod and earbuds while mowing the lawn.

That’s interesting Michael. I have to say, soundstage is not my main criteria for SQ so I can’t say much there.

I do not have a subwoofer.

My system is fairly high end circa 1990. No EQ. My immediate impression of the album is volume. Way out of proportion to CDs with broad DR. The next immediate impression is harshness and loss of expected subtlety on some tracks. My reaction to that loss of subtlety and some separation is to turn up the volume a little. That does not help and in some cases makes it worse.

I found the CD so unpleasant the first time I played it that I have not played it more than a few times from the CD player. I have played it from a rip of the CD through iTunes with EQ adjustments that make it more palatable.

I’ll listen to the CD again later today and listen for soundstage and pay more attention to clarity (particularly of bass which is one of my main criteria) and separation.

My thoughts, however, are that I have a system that seems to be well selected for the playback of a wide range and variety of CDs without significant DR compression and it does so, in my limited experience, superbly. I would have a hard time saying that such a system is flawed because it will not reproduce high SQ from media intentionally recorded without DR.

I understand your point that there is more to a recording than most systems can (or do) get from it. But if a recording has a dynamic range of 5 then a recording with a (log) dynamic range of 12 is certainly going to have a lot more available to exploit (it seems to me).