There is a piece of music you love, but you think the sound quality of the recording is poor or irritating. Would you rather listen to this track on a great high-end system, or on a very modest system like a car stereo or a small mid-fi bedroom system?
What is the reason for your preference?
Please give us examples.
Good question, Ron. However, as things stand your question is a bit perplexing. You mention the questionable sound quality of a given recording. But then you associate that same recoridng sounding seemingly poor or irritating with a great high-end system.
If this scenario you (and others) paint is not a perplexing paradox, then at the very least it's an oxymoron. Why? Because every recording is less than perfect and therefore inferior sounding though some are obviously more inferior than others. The same can be said about every last playback system. Since a truly great but still inferior (less than perfect) playback system can make some recordings sound rather musical, then it stands to reason that an even greater playback system should cause even more inferior recordings to also sound more musical.
IOW, if a playback system is truly great, then fewer and fewer recordings should sound poor or irritating as you put it.
What perplexes me is that so many continue to blame the poor sound quality of inferior recordings when in reality it should be clear the real message is the system may not be as "great" as previously thought.
So to answer your question, if I thought a recording sounded poor or irritating, I'd continue to listen to it on my obviously less-than-great playback system with the newfound realization / understanding that I've more work to do on my system. Which happens to be true of every last playback system anyway since no system has "arrived". And then I'd get to work on my system.
Examples? Here's a definitely inferior recording and dispite its numerous shortcomings, I still have a blast listening to its level of musicality above 100db. In fact, I'd venture to say there's not too many recordings much more inferior than this.