engineering mistakes on recordings

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.

@stevecham I think Husker Du's production got progressively better once they left SST...but then you have people that don't like Warehouse or Candy Apple Grey cause they thought it was over produced...

I would toss MBV in there as well as wasted production...they were obsessive and hired/fired quickly, put out Loveless (a fantastic album) with poor quality.

I was listening to a live album recently, I can't remember the title at the moment, but whoever mixed it changed the locations of the different players on every track.  A little too much creativity I think.

Unless it's a blatantly experimental, clever approach, I prefer a natural, realistic presentation of the instruments and voices.  +1 for Steely Dan.