Should a good system sound bad with bad recording?

I can't disagree with a good system being more revealing, but on the other hand one of the traps of this hobby is having a system that pushes you into "audiophile" recordings, or otherwise limits your enjoyment of the huge catalogue of great music available. A really musical system will of course sound great with good recordings, but should also allow you to relish music in whatever form available. If you find yourself listening to "Famous Blue Raincoat" and 10 other Lp's/CD's in your collection over and over again, something is very wrong.

I am not sure the issue breaks down as simply as "realistic and accurate" versus "euphonic." I think your system has to do PRAT well to be consistently enjoyable across the musical and recording quality spectrums. There are a lot of other factors, including the voicing of the speakers. But I am still trying to figure out all the issues and the right balance between them.

Jaybo:
Some excellent comments about speakers (I own one of the offending kind at present).

The following I also agree with heartily:

"your stereo should accurately capture the performance and the recording itself. most recordings are meant to sound 'like recordings'. does anyone really think bernstein or the beatles and thousands of relavent recording artists were/are even concerned about 'air' and 'warmth' and all the other bs terms that equipment mongers use. a good stereo system makes you want to own the world's largest music collection."

But dismissing pace and timing?! You loose me entirely. The redundant (but now widely used) acronym "PRAT" may have originally been coined in someone's marketing department, but the phenomenon it attempts to describe is not only tangible, it is at the backbone of ALL good music production AND reproduction. In music production, timing is largely what differentiates great musicians from the lesser (just ask yourself what makes for great blues guitar, and you’ll see what I mean). In a hi-fi, good timing is essential to, as you put it, "accurately capture the performance and the recording itself." This is an area expensive, audiophile systems fall short frequently, especially, but not exclusively, tube based ones. No, this is much more than "intangible marketing 101." Given your otherwise sensible comments, I find your position on this quite puzzling.

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.