1. What makes a good recording to you?

Three things, the performance, the performance, the performance! Everything else is secondary IMO.

2. Your thoughts on importance of dynamic range?

There are historical recordings which do not have ANY dynamic range to speak of. See answer #1.

3. Can you think of any abnormalities in a recording that struck you as odd, like my Stevie Ray Vaughn example? And would this even matter to you?

If I recall correctly there was a real old Dave Mason album on which one track had some of the information recorded out of phase, causing the sound to appear well beyond the speaker's dispersion pattern...interesting if gimmicky...couldn't be played in mono...

While I have and have heard some material that seems to transcend the medium in various aspects, clicks, pops, mono, whatever...it's the music that matters...if there are some nice aspects to the engineering and ultimate playback, it's just icing on the cake.

jimHJJ(...as I finish typing this, I'm listening to "Good Bait" on Coltrane's performance with Red Garland's trio on the 1958 "Soultrane" collection CD reissue, in glorious mono on a Sharp boom-box while at work...Paul Chambers' upright is righteous!...)