Sometimes it is not very subtle. As someone who grew up on well water, the chlorine taste of any city water is unbearable to me.
Low pressure, extremely hard to the point where soap is useless and we had to replace things regularly from scale build up, the UV filter thing we had to run in the basement, the worry that one day you could randomly lose the prime on the pump and they'd have to dig to get it back (which happened once), no fluoride so my teeth aren't the best.
Give me that carbon filtered (removes the chlorine taste) city water any day :)
I think a common misconception is that your water runs through the salt. In reality, the water runs through a filter and the salt water is used to periodically flush the accumulated metals out of the filter. This could lead to some residual salt, but it will get flushed away quickly. The other source of salty water is a busted valve. Replace it and the water will be fine again.
Where was this? Pumps are placed at the bottom of wells and avoid this problem entirely. It's physically impossible for a pump placed at the top to raise water more than 10m.
Toronto has chlorine plants and ozone plants.
(And from my darkroom days, I'm fairly good at nailing 20 °C with my fingers, so I just waited for the tap to give me the right temperature and then poured it straight into the pots.)
Seattle has fantastic city water. Most months of the year, Oakland water is very good (offer not valid for all combinations of reservoir and pipes, your mileage may vary).
Also, if you got used to something like iron or calcium enrichment, you might just not like those vintages, even if they're "objectively" good.
My dad commented specifically that he was impressed at the taste of our tap water, and thought it was an unexpected highlight of the trip.
We grew up on well water. Although by this point they were living "in town" so it is possible that their water has more chlorine, etc, than Toronto's. When I visit them, their tap water tastes dull (but not bad) to me, so there is that.