:


Redbook CD just adequately covers the human
range of hearing. The point is that its 'safety
margin' beyond the audible spectrum is rather
thin, especially above 15kHz. Another contributor
to the 'graininess' some people heard, on early
CDs, is early ADCs and DACs. Quantization
noise was much higher than, from both finished
CD and from the players themselves.


Yet another factor was in production: Before
the late '80s, most of recording, mixing, and
mastering was done at 16/44.1. As explained
in Xyph and other papers, that source of
grain or noise was mitigated by moving to 24/
92 or higher in production, then dithering
down to deliverable - 16/44.1.


With better conversion since the 1990s, and
higher production resolution, a huge source
of graininess has been eliminated, and CD
now lives up to its full potential, if only certain
loudness production practices would cease(!)