What is a bad recording?

Use your tone controls if you have them.  Most pop recordings are mastered all over the place.  One could use a good room eq software (Dirac) to balance your listening position.   The best advice I can give is to find a recording that’s a benchmark with acoustic instruments, preferably classical, and hear if the instruments sound realistic.  But trying to do this with popular rock stuff is a losing battle.  

@mihorn - Oh, I definitely hear that !! EC absolutely sounds like he's singing right next to your ears.  

A bad recording to me is one with a lot of grainy static like sound. Or recorded with a very small soundstage that doesn’t go past the speakers. Or vocals too loud or quiet. Really amazing the wide range of quality. Good recordings are really a joy to listen to. 
 

I have Rockport Avior ii speakers driven by a Boulder 866 amp 

@ronboco - Can you give us specific examples?? 

@erik_squires 

How can I possibly know whether their are "faults" in a recording unless I've been in the room witnessing the original performance?  I suppose, were I a trained recording engineer I might not be asking this question.

Typically, recordings that sound "bad" to me are tonally unbalanced (more often than not, overly emphasizing upper mids and highs). Then, there are those plagued by exaggerated vocal sibilance. The latter can be attributed to poor mic' ing technique. The latter, I'm not so sure. Can we assume all recording artists are after a natural sounding product?  I have no idea.