engineering mistakes on recordings

It's why Donald Fagan and Steely Dan records sound so good. They pay attention to details and understand the subtleties of music.
If you listen to current/popular music, you just have to lower your standards.

I just get upset with crappy sound
Alan

Much of the time the recording engineer is not the mix engineer. Also, some producers/mix/mastering engineers have lost their hearing through high sound pressure levels and the end result, while the master may sound good to them, is a sonic mess to the rest of us. I cite early Husker Du, Superchunk, Guided By Voices and other so-called "low fi" bands as sounding like crap, when they really didn’t have to.

But then of course, there is the (Ringo: "one more time") Re-Mastered (!) market for us all to enjoy and spend our money on! Hmmm...

What irks me is that engineers have problems with the technique of recording band members solo. For years, it's been commonplace to record each instrument separately, yet many engineers cannot create a natural soundstage.
  It takes proper mic'ing, then a good ear for mixing. For some reason, many modern rock and jazz recordings do not have any space between musicians, and an unrealistic positioning of the instruments; i.e., a jazz drum kit is not 10 feet wide, also if the bass player is on the left side, we should hear the sound from that side with spill-over to the right side.
(I know sometimes the producer is calling the shots).

 IMO, it's a lack of the fundamental skills of music recording. The best engineers started as assistants to an experienced recording engineer.