Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?

If good is taken as accurate then absolutely yes, of course it should sound bad

If good is taken as a nice sounding system with plenty of forgiveness, warmth and oodles of extra harmonic distortion in the bass and lower mid then NO.

A system that colors sound in a pleasing way can invariably make a bad recording sound passable. ( a good recording, however, will never shine as much )

Since the majority of recordings are mediocre or mastered for mediocre systems...selection of a system is a matter of opinion/choice and even a very accurate system has its limitations/drawbacks.

Many mastering engineers in studios with $100,000+ systems/facilities will still use something like Yamaha NS10's, just to see how their master will translate to a mediocre system. (the majority of systems can't properly handle the dynamics of lifelike music and lose balance)

Fortunately the odd one slips through....one where the mastering engineer has not been heavy handed with a soft limiter. Some genre's fair better than others.

Maybe this is a trick question and I'm not getting it but shouldn't a "bad" recording sound bad on the best of systems and worse on lesser equipment?

'Splain it to me Lucy.

the best recording with the worst system will sound better than the worst recording with the best system.

if a system is forgiving, i.e., subtractively colored, aan excellent recording will still present the cues to indicate its recording quality.

what may be lost is some extension and clarity.

Went to the Denver Hi-fi show yesterday, took my favourite test cd. Oasis-'D'ya know what I mean'. It is a brutal sounding cd that gives systems a hard time due to the harsh/jangly/feedbacky sounds emitted from said cd. I played it today through my pc setup and actually preferred the sound over mega expensive sound systems! Pc speakers that cost $60! One system I played it through at the show the speakers alone were $55000 and sounded well and truely awful (I am being polite). If quality costs money, why can't 'proper' systems do it?. My cheapo pc speakers can!

the best recording with the worst system will sound better than the worst recording with the best system.

as Confucious might say....

BTW: I agree Mrtennis with you....at least to a certain point....An excellent recording however will NOT sound as good as a "judiciously compressed" recording on a mediocre system....this is why we have so much badly compressed recordings out there today and the so called "CD loudness wars". Producers & Mastering engineers know all to well what they are doing when they compress stuff for radio stations and car stereos. (They are deliberately producing something that sounds optimum on an average system. Often perceived loudness is a key criteria in defining a "good" recording for Producers who have a target market in mind; a target market dominated by owners of mediocre systems)

So what I am saying is that it is quite complex.

Those with high quality accurate systems suffer the most when listening to this badly compressed music as it is no longer optimum for their system and the music is notably compressed when compared to a good recording.

Those with poor quality systems suffer the most when listening to high quality recordings with large dynamic range, as it is no longer optimum for their system; as the listener turns up the volume to hear the "softer" sounds or detail then distortion and compression affects louder sounds and often the the balance is lost, resulting in less clarity.

In my experience, these effects are most obvious on your average movie DVD, which typically has much better dynamic range than most pop music; on mediocre systems most people will struggle to hear the dialogue until the volume is turned up rather too loud and at which point the loud parts are often distorted (this is often because the speaker cannot properly produce low level sounds accurately; these speakers that tend to have an optimum but limited sound level range or sweet spot)