In article ,
John Williamson wrote:
You'd also think by your post that digital gives perfect results every
time. Which means you don't much listen to current commercial
recordings.

Professional digital equipment as currently made is capable of better
quality than the equivalent analogue equipment. Even bottom end digital
recorders are of a quality I could only dream of in the 1970s.

Given I worked as a sound engineer in broadcast all my life I'm well aware
of that.

On the other hand, there are a lot more incompetent operators producing
stuff for general consumption round nowadays than there once were.
Partly, this is because almost anyone can afford a digital setup,
whereas, in the days of analogue recording, there was a major investment
in easily damaged equipment, so the ham fisted and half deaf operators
very rarely got anywhere near it.

Quite. For all the wonders of computer control and digital everything, the
end result is frequently rather worse than in the all analogue days. Where
people had to be trained to get acceptable results.

Don't blame the tools for the bad sound on modern CD releases.

Faster cars with easier controls don't make for better driving standards.

The point really is that the original CD was designed for as near
faultless domestic reproduction as possible. And nothing has changed in
the laws of physics since. Any data reduction algorithm simply makes that
worse. It may not be audible on some things - but you can be certain it
will be on others.

--
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Dave Plowman London SW
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