I've also noticed that subwoofer design is not at all bassist-friendly. The typical folded horn has very uneven response with very loud peaks. Great for getting the kick drum to knock your head off at a hundred paces. Terrible for communicating a melodic idea with any dynamic control.
It's even worse in indoor venues. Either the space is small, in which case there are usually strong peaky room resonances at frequencies that will make the bass boom way too loudly on some notes, or the space is big, in which case the low end has long reverb time at nearly any frequency, turning everything into mush. Both problems are very impractical to fix with acoustic treatment - lows are hard to absorb. If the room wasn't designed for good lows (they never are), you only get good low-frequency acoustics by miraculous accident. Your best hope is a very articulate and flat-as-possible low frequency speaker system, so at least the sound at the source is clear. And as a rule that is not what subwoofers are. Bad acoustics plus bad speakers has predictable results.
It's also true as others have noted that a bad engineer can ruin any venue or gear no matter how good they are. I remember that back in the day, CBGB's was the first venue where I ever actually heard decent live sound. I had heard some pretty awfully amplified local live music growing up on Long Island, but my first real club show was Living Colour at CBGBs in 1987, just before their first album came out. They were amazing in that small room and I could hear everything with perfect clarity. Most times that I went back there, it was excellent sound from anywhere in the room. There were one or two notable exceptions, where the usual clarity and power turned into painful booming mush. Same exact gear - I don't know about board, amps, etc. but they didn't change the PA cabs for literally decades - so I can only assume it was a particularly bad engineer.