Does it have to sound good for you to like it?

Sound quality matters not a whit to me. I have a great collection that includes many 78s and 7" 45s. Neither known for their stellar sound quality, LOL. I’ll leave the audiophiles to their own devices.

I would not listen if the sound is poor.

Classical music for me is predominately piano or piano with orchestra, not much violin with orchestra or piano-violin and lil-to-nothin for opera. 

Solo piano is another level that have to be near-perfectly recorded. That is the case that I would not listen if piano is compromised!

On the other hand, I have bootleg of Pink Floyd "Live In Pompeii" that I would listen a lot more often than perfectly recorded and mastered DSOM or The Wall.

I think that it is a shame, in this day and age, to read that members of this forum have been cut off from some of our rich, recorded heritage because they have found the sound quality of those recordings to be obtrusive.

Fortunately, technology is moving us in the right direction. All of the Plangent Process corrected recordings that I have heard have been a revelation. IMHO, they absolutely make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I can only hope that the process gains more traction so that those concerned with sound quality can begin to enjoy more poorly recorded music.

This is not to imply that Plangent Process is a panacea for everything that can go wrong with a recording, but it goes a long way. And I can only imagine the results of future restoration software as the full weight of technology is brought to bare on the issue.

OP,

I know what you mean. I was just comparing several different recordings of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony. Poor quality recording gets dismissed immediately, there are quite a few of those. But I was in a real quandary between two, one more recent (Boston Symphony 2023 I believe) very well recorded one where i felt the conductor sped things up in places and lost the impact of the piece. So, I went back to my “go to”… 1980 Cleveland orchestra version… while clearly less resolution, the performance was worth it for me.

But in general, I’m not interested in poor recordings