What is a bad recording?

Surprisingly, my main listening system has revealed more music interest than often overcomes the technical recorded problems.  It is high end and high resolution but a resolution which exposes the music better.  The second system has lower resolution and is especially warm and sweet although CD playback only.  I've fortunately saved some musically important recordings that had dreadful or boring sound.  In the past five years, those recordings have been rescued by the exposure of more of the music, dynamically, color and tonality, etc.  Just last night, my friend brought over a John Coltrane and a Grant Green album that he thought were too bland and the latter with a bit of distortion on a few passages.  In my system, wow, they were very listenable with only a hint of overload in the Green.  He was impressed and so was I!  I had a horrible early digital recorded CD until I reheard it on my high end system.  The separate threads of symphony, chorus and soloists were greatly enhanced and the rather brittle sound of the chorus was partially reduced with the smoother fuller sounding orchestra.  Most of the worst digital recordings tend to be pop and rock while jazz is generally the best, especially when the master recordings were analog tape and not digital (bad mastering/compression, etc).    

@toddalin My experiences with ELP mostly vinyl, I'll have to check out what's available with streams since this my present listening mode. All my vinyl ELP purchased back in the day so likely first or close to first pressings. Perhaps there is a remastered version of Brain Salad Surgery that has better sound quality. I have over 3k vinyl, virtually all purchased back in the day. What I've found is streams may have an advantage in some cases because of remastering, some vinyl produced from worn out stampers and second, third generation or worse masters.  My streaming setup has actually increased my enjoyment of many more recordings, what I previously thought were bad recordings often turn out to be ok. 

I thought also I read that Dark Side of the Moon had good and bad digital releases, even before surround/DVD.  A good release would have some amazing effects which others would quash. 

To me, an example of a "bad" recording is John Lewis's "The Bridge Game," or his 4 CD interpretation of Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier, " which was released in 1986.  It's a wonderful performance, including bass, guitar and string quartet.  If you ever want to relax and meditate with some truly tasteful and sophisticated jazz/classical crossover music, this is a real winner.  For some strange reason it is not available on any streaming service, but I would urge anyone interested in this type of music to find a CD copy.  The downside is that the instruments are buried in a thick digital fog.  It's not unlistenable--on the right system it's pleasant enough--but it's far from what we would expect from a digital recording today.

When I first started listening to high resolution music one of the brands I came across which I just could not listen to was 2L.no

All sounded too hard and bright to me, and really kind of stand outs in this regards compared to what I was downloading from HD tracks.