Can you give a small list of good and bad recordings according to you?
Not a big list, but I can give an example, so you get the idea. Two off the top of my head come to mind:
The Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner, at least on my copy, is shrill as hell, with no depth. An example of a good recording, IMO, would be the Sheffield Labs Mackowicz thing. However, as far as musical quality of performance goes, The Trumpet Kings blow away Adam Makowicz.
PS: I recently came upon a recording I thought I'd lost in a divorce (you know how that goes). Stan Getz/Albert Daily. The liner notes say it was recorded with 2 mics directly in to a Levinson LNP-2 preamp, into a Levinson modified Studer A80. When I first heard it I thought the balance was off. I'll re-listen with my new system and see.
PSS: bad recordings include almost anything that was heavily multi-miked, in the classical department. DGG and CBS were notorious for that. Also, any solo piano (Chopin, etc) where the mics are stuck inside the piano cavity. Those will never sound very realistic, unless the perspective is one of the player, and not an audience sitting 20 feet away.
PSSS: I don't want to mention pop-style recordings, but some of them are just plain goofy. Instruments wandering around all over the place.
Finally, I don't want to disparage the German label too much. If the recordings were not always great, the performances were always a cut above. Just listened to a 2 volume set of Bach solo cello suites on DGG. It's hard to screw that up, and it sounded great. I don't know how it was recorded, but the sound was pretty natural.