Speakers and system for compressed recordings?

Gee, I remember the only thing that sounded good via transistor radio was the rare morning report of local school closing on snow days!!!!

Iso,

Funny you say that because as I recall that is exactly correct!

Before I owned a real stereo, I would operate on the transistor radio and run the internal wire to the speaker to an external bigger speaker, whatever I could find. That was one of my first big steps up in sound! True story!

Seriously though, its only in the last few years I've actually discovered how good some of those old recordings heard mainly on am radio as a kid can really sound. Surprising good and very enjoyable!

Classic rock sounds great on my high end system. I was in your situation for years until I found the right combination of amp and speakers. Almost any kind of music now souinds good on my system. The Blu-Ray version of DSOTM is absolutely mind blowing on my set up.

I said it somewhere else on the forums, but that is why I have Reel To Reel, LP, CD, Sacd....each era has its own sound and media to be played on.....so you need more systems.....no ONE system can do it.

A revealing system can easily highlight a poor recording's flaws. However... it'll also highlight it's strengths. You may have to look/listen a little harder for them, but I've found even some of the worst recordings have a good trait or two.

There are very, very few recordings I can't listen to through my system. I don't buy music to listen to my system. I bought my system to listen to my music. There's a difference, believe it or not. If you can't listen to a great album because the recording's horrible, you may want to reevaluate your priorities.

Again, there are a few albums I just can't listen to on my system. They're very few and far between. I listen to more rock/classic rock/metal than anything else.