Quality Rock/Pop CD recordings

Chet Atkins & Mark Knofler: Neck & Neck

Listen to track 3, "There will be some changes made". The two voices and guitars are spaced ideally for a great almost-in-your-room effect.

Jennifer Warnes: Famous Blue Raincoat

here are a few that I like in addition to the Steely Dan 2 Against Nature.

Roger Waters in the Flesh tour
Pink Floyd The Wall
Madonna Videos 93-99 (awesome sound)
Beastie Boys video anthology

Glad to see "Amused To Death" make this list, but you have to hear the vinyl. It absolutely blows away the CD version - even the Gold one. Anything on Lugnut's list - I have all of them as well. But, here are some of my favorites:
Paul McCartney - "Unplugged - The Official Bootleg" Best sounding CD AND LP I own. And it's live.
Steve Miller - "Born 2 B Blue"
Aztec Two Step - "See, It Was Like This... An Acoustic Retrospective"
Eric Clapton - "From The Cradle" One of the best recorded single-take session albums ever.
Guy Clark - "Dublin Blues"
Crosby, Pevar, Raymond - "CPR" Better than all but one CS&N album
Crash Test Dummies - "God Shuffled His Feet"
Ziggy Marley - "Spirit Of Music"
The Pretenders - "Isle Of View" Another great live CD.

I could go on & on...
Ed

I would suggest Reckoning by the Grateful Dead. It is a collection of tunes from their live acoustic sets from their split acoustic/electric sets in the early 80's. They also released an album called Dead Set which is a collection of tunes from the live electric sets from that same tour, but the acoustic sets seemed to be better recorded. A great live acoustic album that everyone should own.

Any disk by Ben Harper is well recorded and will contain exceptional music. Elvis Costello's "All This Useless Beauty" has great sonics and is a great album. Aimee Mann Bachelor #2 is another example of a quality rock recording. Natalie Merchant's solo releases are examples as well. Los Lobos Kiko is a classic that has great sonics as well. I am sure that there are more opinions on this subject.

Some what I consider to be fine recordings are... and some do depart from the requested genre...
Heart - "The Road Home" - recorded live in a five hundred seat theater in bands hometown of Seattle. John Paul Jones produced it.
Little Feat - "Waiting for Columbus" - double disc live recording. Not bad.
Alison Krauss - "Now That I Found You" - There is some well recorded music on this album.
Vince Gill - "Souvenirs" - Most all his stuff is well recorded.
One of the best recorded albums I've heard (besides Janis Ian's) is George Straight's "Chill of an Early Fall". Superb.