How much is about the recording

^exactly^… and agree.

Most gear is pretty good, and things do not improve as one traverses through the audio chain.

If the recording is not too stellar then it is immediately pretty disappointing, but when the recording is good… then as long as the system is staying out of the way, it remains pretty damned good… IME.

The key is to get the music you like to sound as good as it can. If you take your system too far in one direction, you'll end up with 3 CDs that sound extremely good and everything else will sound terrible. 

Seriously?
what direction would that be?

if it sounds great with one recording, then it should sound great with 90% of them.
Or maybe my system is “not resolving enough”?

Yes, seriously. I have no idea about what system you have or how resolving it is. That is not my point. On many of the systems I’ve put together, I can get it to sound absolutely stunning using some very high-quality recordings and the right tune-up.

@russ69

What was tuned up? How was that done?
Are these systems super bright? Or what does resolving mean here?

Absolutely knock your socks off. But set up that way 99% of my music sounds like crap. That is not the right direction. You do what you can do to get 90% of the music you listen to sound good. A hot demo set-up only has limited function.

I have not set up systems like you describe, and it sounds like you have a lot more experience.

I usually put on a handful of recordings that I am familiar with, and they all either seem to sound great or they all seem to suck… I do not find that some sound much better, and some sound much worse.

Hence; I am wondering what is being done to get such a result.
(If nothing else I would likely want to avoid that.)

Well, it would take a book to tell the whole story but there are many ways to get where you want to go. The way I do it is find the right loudspeaker, the right amp for that speaker, the right tubes for the amp, the right preamp and tubes, the right source, the right speaker placement, the right room acoustics, and finally the right cables. (Lots of experience to do that, which means lots of wrong choices)

^Thanks.^

I started that’s way and recently went back through the front end... maybe the equipment was already good enough as the changes were subtle…and everything seems to sound pretty good, unless the recording is overly shrill to begin with.

or it is to the point now that the recording quality is the biggest variable.

I am probably a bit lucky.

russ69 I hear what you're saying. I've thought of adding an A+ list of the recordings that are truly incredible.

@tomcarr luckily I like Radka Toneff, “Jazz in the Pawn Shop”, and a few other vocals, jazz and other gendres.
The list of only Pink Floyd and limited, few others, gets a bit redundent.
we sort of need a few in each gendre, maybe even including Country or Rockbilly to really be inclusive… 😎