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RE: Simply but beautifully put.

"Maybe low-bitdepth digital audio workstations and people new to the technology was the culprit, not CD playback in and of itself."

I think that's pretty well accepted as the case. I was an early CD adopter so my collection covers the whole range of quality. The distribution medium has plenty of resolution and almost enough bandwidth. But the early A/D's were lucky to hit 14 bits monotonic and I think the early mixing software used 16 bit fixed point. And then there was the whole jitter issue. Any medium gets perfected with time and ironically seems to max out congruently with or just past obsolescence.

Today's mastering and playback gear can produce excellent results in my book so if the sound isn't good it's probably a human failure. With today's inexpensive DSD recorders and high resolution DAC's at the playback end digital has fully arrived even for the garage hobbyist.

I have numerous CD's of older performances that are transcribed from 78's. They fully capture the aliveness of that medium. I think that attribute was a result of it's limitations rather than it's strengths. The S/N was so bad that the performers had to really put out to get a good capture so the sound and performance is perky and alive, not nuanced, and I like that. I've never been enamored with LP's, compared with tape or 45's they seem a bit dead.

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