What is a bad recording?

@sns

This is one of my "go to" cuts for resolution:

https://youtu.be/fDBjQ3r3cAM

Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of progressive rock was recorded this way.  Yes is similar.

Now this cut separates what can sound like pure noise on the wrong system, or many streaming platforms I’ve heard, but on a good system, the imaging of the clavinets is amazing.

https://youtu.be/9c9KvU6cE6E

To me, a bad recording is one where the highs and lows were rolled off. One can try to compensate, but if the frequency was never there, it’s very hard to make it sound like it’s there. 

There is more bad rooms than bad recordings if we listen to classical music ...

In jazz there is at least as much bad recordings as there is bad rooms ...

For more commercial music the room matter often not or way less  because so much recordings are often bad or offensive...

The system/room acoustically translate the recording... A bad translation will spoil the original text so well written it could be... But for a bad text a good translator can improve in decreasing the pain ...

Thanks so much for the engagement everyone, but if possible specific album and tracks are helpful! :) 

Chicago II is notoriously known to be a bad recording, or more specially, poorly mastered.  "Make Me Smile" and "24 or 6 to 4" are two specific tracks.  There are a couple of remixes that sound better, but even with those, you can still hear limitations, with compression and muddiness being the primary issues IMO.

My speakers are JM Lab Mezzo Utopia, but you can detect the problems with this album through just about anything.