Roger Nichols is a name only the most avid Steely Dan fan might recognize.  But in the industry he loved Nichols was widely known and respected for his engineering skills.  It was Nichols that crafted the signature sound associated with Steely Dan albums - a sophisticated but not heavy handed approach that made the group's sometimes complex arrangements easy to take in.  Saturday (4/9) of the same week that Aja entered the National Registry of Recordings in Washington, a distinction very few Rock albums share (story), Nichols lost a year long battle with pancreatic cancer.  Producer Gary Katz called the Nichols approach to getting the sound right on Steely Dan records 'maniacal', going so far as to say that the records, '...could not have been done without Roger', and credited the engineer for always devising ways to capture sound that hadn't been tried before. Trained as a nuclear engineer, Nichols passed-up a career in that field because he did not think the records he was buying sounded as good as they should.  In addition to multiple Steely Dan albums, Nichols also worked with the Beach Boys, Rickie Lee Jones, Rosanne Cash, Frank Sinatra and others, collecting seven Grammy awards along the way.
LATimes.com