Speakers and system for compressed recordings?

A different approach: I am with you, Bigwavedave! I like the music I like and will not be forced into listening only to audiophile-approved records. Plus, while some remasterings are indeed great, who can afford $40 to $60 for an LP or remastered CD? Here is one idea: When I upgraded my speakers from my Vandersteen 1C to Ohm Walsh 2000s, I got something I did not expect. While good recordings do indeed sound wonderful, the bad ones have become much, much more listenable. Numerous times, CDs that I had thought were unlistenable have become enjoyable over my new Ohms. I have often thought, "oh, so this was what the engineer was hearing in the control room. Not great, but okay."

Why the change? I dunno. I am guessing that inexpensive crossovers at exactly the frequencies to which many are most sensitive, 2.5-5kHz, add to the badness of bad recordings. My Ohms run full range up to 8kHz (I have subs that come in under 80Hz as well). So, without a crossover to mess up the sound in that crucial range, the bad recordings are only as bad as they originally were, and the edginess is not increased by the loudspeaker. This, of course, does nothing to restore the flattened dynamics that you complained about, but at least I can enjoy these recordings again.

Try some speakers without crossovers, or no crossovers in that upper-mid to lower-treble range, like Ohms, Martin Logans, etc., and see if those horrible recordings are a bit more tolerable.

I can echo Bondman' experience with lesser recordings and some of the design attributes of speakers that can help make even most lesser recordings very enjoyable on the terms that the engineers and producers who created them intended. Even holds true for 80-90% of modern loudness wars type CDs that many audiophiles may find unlistenable otherwise, although these offer some additional challenges in terms of power and clarity needed to deliver lots of loud dynamics and transients clearly and in a digestible manner that can often actually be quite tasty.

Bondman, be carefull, it's easy to confuse coincidence with correlation. Despite some other wonderful qualities, I've heard the full range ESL ML's exhibit just the opposite phenomenon. It could just as easily be due to one speaker providing more or less detail than the other, or something else all together.
I am fully convinced that many of these modern pop recordings are fundamentally flawed, and without some kind of electronic manipulation, an accurate system will expose them as such.

I agree with Kbarkamian...I think it's somewhat dependent on your system. Poor recordings were more problematic on past systems I've owned. I lucked into not having as big a problem with my current rig and there are very few albums that I cannot listen to. Not sure what it is about the system that helps...but it has a knack for making music sound coherent, where the timing and balance are just bang on, so you hear where the music is going and that kind of overshadows other stuff. I guess you have to find a certain strength that pulls you in regardless.

That said, any decent hi-fi will probably make some of the worst recordings sound pretty bad. As long as music has some room to breathe then I'm usually good. When that's gone and all you have is a big wall of sound, that makes it a lot tougher.

Donald Norths speakers were very very good and made in a sense even compressed recordings very much pleasing and lively. It seemed as the compression was lesser in a way.
However, lately it seems his page is down when it comes to loudspeakers:-(
Personally, i would like to live with the Studio.