What is a bad recording?

I think it is the old Yardbird albums and definitely a bunch of the Russian symphony orchestra from the late 1900. If I remember I have a couple recordings made in Vladivostok? with choir. They sound somewhat like they were wax phonographic cylinder recordings, Tinny, no bass, tiny dynamic range. Unplayable regardless of the system. My memory is not good enough to remember the details... and I’m attending the puppy so, not going to spend the hour it would take to find them. 

There are lots of intermediary bad produced by Deutsch gramophone  in the 1980 when they went digital.. just horribly brittle, trebly screechy. 

There are lots of "bad" recordings around. Lots from the wall of sound era. Talented groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers suffer from this on recordings from that era. I also find some of my old favorites-some of the CSNY stuff, Procul Harum, etc., is not always great, depending on the version. Fortunately, a lot of this music has been remastered to good effect and there is a wealth of good stuff available. As to my speakers- Zellaton Plural Evo

Most of the Cream albums are great but sound at best ok & often terrible in every system I’ve had in the past 50 years from entry mid fi level to some very good systems I’ve had & have. Beatles albums from a similar time generally sounded much better. 

EC’s voice is distorted and to me this sounds like a classic case of under-padding a microphone that is too hot for the input module.  I can’t imagine that anyone would do this intentionally, and if it was done later in the chain, I think someone would have taken steps to mitigate it.

Under-padding of the microphone is a real bug-a-boo and you will hear it crop up in many recordings if you really listen.  I have this disk and hear it in several of the tunes, though not to the extent of the EC cut.

Erik, I agree with and understand exactly what your point is. I have always understood "music quality" is not the same as "sound quality".

I even started a thread about how I automatically mentally grade every album I play into categories D, C, B, A and A+, BASED ENTIRELY ON SOUND QUALITY, REGARDLESS OF THE QUALITY OF THE ARTIST, GROUP OR GENRE.

The sound quality is the recording quality.

The music quality is not related to the recording quality.

PS- I always like your posts. They are consistently thoughtful and considerate, which appeals to the thinking person.