I've been listening to albums from Steely Dan and Donald Fagen again recently. And I'm reminded of how outstanding their recordings were. This is even more true, I think, of their later recordings, like Gaucho, Two Against Nature, Nightfly, and Morph the Cat. The placement and almost the shape of the sound in the mix is so incredibly clear; everything can be heard, with good timbre, and the overall mix is nicely integrated and balanced. Really a joy. I have a more or less mid-fi two-channel system: Qobuz downloads => Vox on Macbook M1 => Bifrost 2/64 => IOTAVX SA3 => Triangle BR08 and REL T7x subwoofer. I think this system is quite good in general at imaging and instrument separation, as well as soundstage width and to some extent depth. But with these albums it feels like a much higher level system - and all these qualities are pronounced. So basically my ears tell me that recordings themselves are very different with respect to their ability to reveal these aspects of the music. I wonder if any of you are recording engineers or could otherwise confirm what I'm hearing.