Playing Sin & Punishment 2 feel weird. Sort of... off. It took me a while to understand why:
 
The sound design is complete garbage. 
 
Imagine playing Modern Warfare 2 with completely forgettable music, no soldier talk, barely audible weapons and no rumble, almost no impressive environmental effects or any sort of oomph. Sort of lame, eh? Yeah.  
Sin & Punishment 2 is everything that I had hoped for and more*, and the screen is going completely crazy with projectiles, explosions, boss fight after boss fight and hundreds of minions everywhere and the most sickening, gravity-defying camera and character movements you'd expect from a rollercoaster shmup, especially from Sin&Punishment's sequel. But... there is no soundscape to back it up. No memorable music to make it epic. No world of destruction and chaos the game sends to my sound system, no matter what tweaks I apply to the options screen. Just.. generic percussion and explosion sounds from a 20 year old archive.

That's a problem with a lot of shmups, if you ask me.  Especially the music.  It's a shame, especially when it brings down a game you otherwise love.
 
Raystorm HD, which just dropped this week on 360, sounds horrible.  Same kind of thing.

But they did it right in the first game. :(

It's not really a shmup, though, it's more of a star fox style game.
 
You can probably just turn off the volume and listen to somehting else

I've heard worst.  But then again, I liked the PS2 more than my Gamecube due to audio, likewise with the SNES to the Genesis.

Mute the music, play your favorite band off your computer speakers. 

Hm, will the story of the game start to make sense at any point? :D

Yeah, games like these deserve great sound design.

Woah woah, Modern Warfare 2 has memorable music? What? I can't even think of a single track from the game... 
 
I've been too busy dodging bullets and shooting things to even pay attention to the sound.

You know what had good music 
 
  

I'm sorry Wayne, I was supposed to buy this today, but I got sidetracked and bought a console instead. Please forgive me.

I haven't noticed anything bad about the soundtrack, honestly.  To me, it sounds like a Treasure game should sound.  (Though the Game Over music is quickly becoming etched into my brain.)

The only thing that bugs me is how quite shooting your guns are. They are almost silent if you aren't getting a direct hit.