In article , Chesney Christ wrote:
Leaving aside the X vs Y business, I'd say stereo digital reproduction
is pretty much as good as it needs to be right now; the signal recorded
is essentially identical to the input signal. There's not much room for
improvement at the moment.

If you had said that modern stereo digital reproduction is _capable of
being_ pretty much as good as it needs to be then I could possibly agree.

I still buy modern CDs (1990s or later) where I think the sound could
have been much better. Maybe with SACDs (to return to a topic in the
thread title) in their marketing-led infancy still, more attention is
being paid to getting it right in practice.

With sales of the modern classical music CD sufficiently low on a
per-release basis, I suspect it's entirely possible to be unable to
spend enough time on basic good prodction these days, let alone time to
correct any errors.

--
John Phillips