Quality system, make poor recordings sound better?

All i know is last year the same recordings i attributed to poor now sound great . a lot of tweaks since then . Makes me think it is not the recordings. But the system i played them on . When over %50 of my catalog not sounding good last year to being able to listen to pretty much anything now . It is nice . opens up a much larger world of enjoyable listening .

Listen: This really isn't rocket science. it is logical and provable. Some recording engineers used the cheapest equipment, wiring and mikes that they could find and were solely concerned with getting the music on tape. Some couldn't afford or didn't care about the latest and greatest recording equipment. Especially the mikes. You go to a good studio with the cheapest radio shack mixer, mikes and recording equipment vs the top of the line equipment and record the same performance/artist and you tell me that the recordings played back on decent equipment won't reveal how badly the recording was? of course it will. take most cd's from the early eighties and they sound as if a tweeter aimed at your ear with a drill. This is why so many recordings are re-mastered. an attempt to fix the early recording issues. or to make more money, or both. This contributes first hand to "listeners fatigue" Ever wonder why you have trouble sitting for a long period some times listening? Many times it isn't the equipment, it is the recording itself. it simply drives you out of the room. like a magpie in your living room. Don't get me wrong. Many times the music is great. But the recording is really poor.

enjoy

11-06-14: Maplegrovemusic
can someone who feels as the op provide us with a recording you think is poor . i would like to play it through my system

Although most of my listening is to classical music, I'll cite some examples from among popular recordings that happen to be from the 1960's, from artists I particularly like. All of these recordings are available on CD:

1)The Blues Project, "The Blues Project Anthology" (2 disc set on the Polydor Chronicles label). Particularly the first nine tracks on disc 2, which originally comprised their "Projections" album.

2)The Seekers, "All Bound for Morningtown; their EMI Recordings 1964-1968" (4 disc set on EMI).

3)Matt Monro, "This is Matt Monro" (2 disc set on EMI "Music for Pleasure"). I'm referring particularly to the instrumental accompaniment, not to the reproduction of his voice.

I'll add that I would resist any temptation to blame the 1960's technology for the disappointing sonics of these recordings. As evidence of that, the Chesky remastering of the 1962 recording of Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein (Chesky CD31) is easily among the very best recordings I have ever heard, and shows what the technology of that time was capable of.

Regards,
-- Al

Thankyou all for the great indepth answers. A few days ago my
daughters boyfriend brought over his IPod and connected it to
my main system. He was thoughtful enough to have downloaded
some of the music I like, new and older recordings. I thought
all the music played sounded spectacular. There wasn't that
big of gap in sound quality between older and newer recordings
that I experienced with CDs. Go figure. I think maybe I should
get an Ipod as a source for music.

Digital complicates things a lot in that there are unlimited ways any particular digital audio files may have been processed at various points in ways that have major effects on sound quality. The differences will no doubt be subtler
played on lesser equipment but more significant as the playback system gets better.

For example, there is much less difference between my best digital files and my worst(all lossless FLAC, a few converted from lossy compressed mp3 file download) played back on my Sangean WR-1 table radio, my least hifi playback device, though no slouch as table radios go, compared to played back at home via my main rig laying on teh big OHM F5 speakers. I have a half dozen or so other options in place for playing back those files concurrently. The others all fall in the middle somewhere in regards to overall sound quality.