How much is about the recording

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.)

I'd also agree. But I do think it's possible to have a very revealing system and still listen to sub-optimal recordings and enjoy them. It's also highly dependent on the genre of music one listens to, I've found classical and jazz/blues to have the greatest delta of recording quality between poor vs. excellent.

@russ69  What was tuned up? How was that done?
Are these systems super bright? Or what does resolving mean here?

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)

I don't do it, but maybe simple tone controls or frequency correction would be another way. (I'm not a fan of this method). 

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.

Are these systems super bright? Or what does resolving mean here?

Yes, they tend to be towards the brighter side, but you can have full high frequency extension without being too bright. Resolving is detail retrieval, that happens across the whole frequency spectrum, but you can take it too far. Harder to explain but I have steered away from a lot of super hi-end products that take detail retrieval too far. I want to hear the music sheets shuffling but I don't want it to dominate the recording.