Old recordings sound poor on my Burmester 232

@genomeip On hearing flaws

Even on good basic or mid priced budget systems you should be able to detect flaws in the music recordings. The question is surely about whether you can get over this mind blockage. The other question of course is whether a chosen system is inviting you in, for you to enjoy music,

Generally speaking, and not aimed at any one person on here, if it’s an old bad recording or new well produced piece, it’s all to do with if you can enjoy the music that’s playing through. Is the equipment you own engaging you enough emotionally, or if not, have you made some mistakes and wasted your money.

We may hear shortly from the OP his list of bad examples.

@mramaswamy11 I have a boulder 866 integrated paired with Wilson Sabrina speakers. I have Nordost Tyr 2 XLRs between my DAC and boulder and Audience FrontRow speaker cables. Power cords are Kimber PK14 Ascent on DAC and PK10 Ascent on amp. 
I recently auditioned Cardas Clear Reflection XLRs. These cables exaggerated sibilance in female vocals and the highs were not as natural and airy as they are with my Nordost Tyr2. The mids were pushed forward and sounded more strained than the relaxed sounding Nordost.
I sent them back after giving them a couple of weeks.

Reason I’m bringing this up is when you figure a full loom of cables into equation with a highly resolving system you end up compounding the effect. You are most likely experiencing this phenomena.
I heard the burnester integrated and it is accurate and resolving. And so will be the upper tier Audio Research. 

Before you abandon Burmester, I would encourage you to try to address room acoustics first and try different cables. Focals will seek you out in the untreated room and hurt you. Secondly, try different cables. Start with replacing Cardas power cords with stock cords. Begin with amplifier. Get a feel for what that does. If it’s a positive effect then you know you need to experiment with different cables.

personally for me a full loom of the same cables never worked. 
 

Good luck. 

And please provide a list of bad sounding recordings. This will provide additional insight. 

Has nothing to do with cables, thread is full of BS. 

This is a good example of how a reasonably highly resolving system accentuates the shortcomings of poor recordings. The LTA MicroZOTL Level 3 Pre pairs well with the Aero DAC, but it does not add much warmth, as one might expect from a tube preamp. It probably won’t magically fix harsh mastering. On the other hand, adding a heavily colored tube amp could compromise the clarity of the Burmester.

I’ve experienced a similar situation, but later I realized that what I needed was not warmth, but smoothness and liquidity. Based on my research, you could try a line-transformer passive pre like the Phasemation LT-1000. You can also explore forums to find other potentially suitable options, but I keep seeing reports that transformer-coupled I/O passive units often outperform many tube or active preamps.