How much is about the recording

Aside from the obvious good attitude of enjoying the music, i agree that the recording itself is the single biggest contributor to quality.  Want proof? Listen to a mid-60s Verve or Mercury recording transferred to regular, old 16/44 CD. On a really good system they are glorious.  Vastly better than most 24/192/blah blah

Justme

That is easy. It depends.

As my system has evolved over the decades. I have occasionally made a turn where it was towards a bit too revealing and emphasized the recording more pushing too many recordings over the edge and subtracted from their appeal. My objective is to have a detailed but rewarding and enjoyable system to listen to. I learned that too revealing is a really bad thing. [a word about revealing: one could spend a lot of time talking about what that means; let’s not].

I really want to enjoy the music. I can’t tell you how many times I have exited an audio store with my ears violated by systems so laced with ridiculous detail and high frequency distortion I thought I was getting a root canal. It is so easy to have one’s analytical skills kick in and focus on how fine a detail you can resolve and the slam and not notice the sound is terrible. This is so endemic it is unreal to me.

Most would say it is about the music… but I think a large portion get caught up in details and slam. The reason companies like Audio Research and Conrad Johnson and a number of others is they have not lost their way in pursuing great musical reproduction and veared off providing details and slam at any cost, or “clean” sound striped of emotional connection.

Tomcarr and tooblue, for comparison, would you mind providing a few examples of recordings you have that fall into each of your A, B, C, and D categories. Don’t know what you listen to, but if you could pick a few examples of recordings that are fairly commonplace, and many of us might be likely to have, that might be helpful. For myself that would be among other things ’50’s-70’s jazz (Charlie Parker through to Weather Report) and rock ’n roll from the 60’s-70’s (Bill Haley and the Comets through to the Sex Pistols). Thanks,

Mike

I have a mixture of new, used and vintage equipment in my entry-level system. My listening space is the exact opposite of what an acoustically appropriate listening room should be. I am also approaching 70 with some hearing loss in my right ear. And despite all of these audio limitations, a well engineered and produced recording will stand out and be a joy to listen to. I find this slightly more obvious on analog recordings, but good digital recordings are obvious even streaming via Blue Tooth. 

I doubt anyone on this thread, or site, has a shite system, so yes, it all about the recording.  Why do some recording have a soundstage that goes out way past the speakers, and other are compressed to the point of almost sounding like mono recordings? Or ones that have everything coming directly from the speakers and the center is empty?  Great recordings are fantastic, and it's a slippery slope from that point on down.  As the adage goes, you can't polish a turd.