Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?

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.........

Yes. The better the system the better ALL recordings will be.

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!

A bad recording can sound good through a well balanced hi-fi system. If one has to resort to buying 'remastered' or.. ageing groups/recording companies wanting to make a bit more cash, by fooling punters that this latest 'souped up' (more eq on the mid) version is better than the old version so one can accomplish a better/acceptable sound from ones system, does that not tell one that something is fundamentally amiss? It does to me.
Rock on.....

Hi Tvad nice to meet you. I have a couple of questions for you. Why was the production quality of the first generation cd's produced sounding duff? And has our hi-fi systems improved so much that early cd's now sound bad?
I also consider myself a compulsive music punter also, by the way.

Here Here, Psychicanimal.

I personally don't blame the quality of any cd. I do blame the quality of 'hi-fi systems' that can't make 'musical' sense of a cd regardless of price of ones' hi-fi, after all whats the point in spending bazillions on a system if It doesn't play all/any of the cd's and makes pleasing noises of what one puts in it? Would anyone buy a car that could only drive down an Interstate?

Zar-

As I listen virtually every genre of music, lots of it well produced, a fair percentage is of 'lesser' quality than for example most 'classical' cd's, should I buy a portable to play some of my cd's? and only play the best on my main system? When I audition hi-fi systems I only take 'lesser' engineered cd's, coz if it plays them well, It will surely sound good on any well produced cd. One of my particular fav cd's that pushes hi-fi systems to the limit is 'D'ya know what I mean' by Oasis.