What songs/albums/artists actually sound worse when played through audiophile systems?

While a superior system, properly set up, will of course make great recordings sound better than an inferior system, it may or may not make most poor recordings sound worse than on the inferior system.  A very fine line separates the two outcomes, and depending on the specific systems and the recording it could go either way.

I’ve found that improvements in accuracy, especially with respect to resolution of fine detail, can often make mediocre or poor recordings sound more enjoyable.

A good example of that would be an orchestral recording having overly bright string sound. I’ve found that the brightness will be less objectionable if the sound of massed strings is reproduced in an accurate and detailed manner than if it is reproduced with less resolution of detail, and consequently in a more homogenized manner.

I’ll mention also that I’ve come to believe that time coherence can be a significant contributor to achieving that. Most speakers are not time coherent, including all speakers having crossover slopes that are more than 6 db/octave, which means nearly all dynamic speakers which have crossovers and are not made by Vandersteen, formerly by Thiel or Green Mountain Audio, and perhaps one or two others. And the addition of a DEQX to my system a few years ago, which can bring any speaker that is not time coherent significantly closer to being so, has helped to firm up that conclusion in my mind. Another member here who is very experienced with time coherent speakers had made a similar point in the long-running DEQX thread. Comparisons I’ve made between listening via speakers and listening via my very detailed and time coherent Stax electrostatic headphones have also led me to that conclusion.

Regards,
-- Al

HI,
 nothing is going to sound worse in a good system (different thing from good components), on the contrary. Surely some recordings will sound better some mediocre, or worse, but even these ones should be enjoyable enough and far from unlistenable. When the worst recordings make sense, are easy to follow, create a believable image and sound like good music (even recorded badly), then you will get much much more from the good one. This is the only way to rediscover your music collection. 

If it’s mixed poorly it will sound bad on any system. In the late seventies I went all the way down the audiophile rabbit hole. I had a great system to play crappy classic rock ( Steely Dan and a few others were exceptions). 

I'll join posters like petg60 and say that none of them sound any worse.  Yeah, Rolling Stones records can sound pretty mediocre but did they ever sound much better than mediocre?  As it says on the back covers of a couple Stones albums, Produced by Andrew Loog Oldham for Impact Sound!  Yeah, impact...  Not fidelity...

Interesting assortment of responses.  I wasn't expecting this to be another controversial audiophile thread, but here we are (and my original wording didn't help much)...

Part of what I have observed in my own system is that some recordings sound incredible (I can actually appreciate jazz and classical in a way I never did before!), but some of the music I used to love the most (older loud classic rock stuff that hasn't been remastered, for instance, or newer lo-fi stuff like Ariel Pink) is just not sounding as good.  I don't mean to say that it actually sounds WORSE than if I were playing it through my crappy car stereo in terms of detail and imaging. 

I think what I am saying is it is just striking how relatively poor it sounds in relation to really well-recorded/mastered music.  On my crappier systems, it would actually be more enjoyable to listen to mediocre records than well-recorded jazz/classical, because it was harder to appreciate without good detail, timbre, and imaging.  Now, just the opposite.

I don't think I'd want to alter my system in a way to change this, because it make the great recordings more mediocre (introducing more distortion and coloration as suggested by teo_audio.  

The time coherence stuff is super interesting to think about too.  Not sure how it would affect some recordings more than others, though.  Any ideas about that?