How much is about the recording

Chicken and the Egg 

Which is more important?

A. Tweaking your system, room, music collection to achieve audio nirvana.

B. The pursuit of new music

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… 😎

I’m pretty happy with my simple streaming set-up.  I often read (my real passion) while listening to music playlists on Qobuz, and the songs that make me stop reading and listen are typically the well recorded, high-res ones, whether I like the song or not.  I guess that’s my barometer.

Thanks Tom, I certainly have enough of those artists to sample the range of recording quality you're describing. 

Mike

I always use spherical styli (Denon 103) for cuts with low dynamic range. Save the micro-line for the audiophile versions. There’s an analog solution for everything.