That's the thing, if you listen to a lot of isolated bass tracks by "famous" names / bands they often sound a bit rubbish, it's just a raw signal as far as the engineer / producer is concerned, a bit like some very rough sketching on a canvas that becomes a painting, after much work and re touching.
Always interesting to listen to this stuff tho
I bet many vocal performances are cringe worthy before the application of the various magic sponges...