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.