Hi
Let me echo some of Jack's experience. I grew more of an orthodox audiophile than I appear to have been
... I remember in College when =doing my master having heated dicussions with a teacher of mine about the clear audible superiority of Lp over CD.. His response in one of our discussions was :" Frantz's go home. Demonstrate the Nyquist theorem, and come back to tell me how in the world the LP can be intrinsically better than CD".. I went home and came back with the feeling that the understanding that it wasn't so much the format but that its implemntation was not yet perfected.
I got my first taste of how good CD could sound when I auditioned the Burmester 870 DAC. This is a little known Burmester product, at least in the USA, it was IMO a groundbreaking product. For the first time CD sounded good, not great, not as good as the best LP but did sound good. At that time I began to hear or thought I heard differences between transports... I then audition a Cabernet transport. Combined with the Burmester 870 DAC/preamp, the sound of CD took a new level of appreciation very, very good ...
Switched to the 979/980 combo .. I had then a good TT , Arm and cartridge and i held dear in my heart, that LP was superior but found out that I was listening to much, much more CD than LPs .. Far more ... I did continue to listen to LP as my reference but it was more a "mind" thing than something I could prove to anyone, let alone the non-audiophile who found the Cd more crisp than LP and certainly more convenient ...
Back to now... I hear from time to time the odd Hi-Rez. I do find them good to very good but haven't compared them seriously to the REDBOOK version in any fashion likely to produce valid conclusions, I seem to prefer the Hi-Rez versions but the Masterings are often different and that could amount for the perceived (or imagined) differences.
My appreciation and sensibility to music have increased .. My susceptibility to fidelity is at an all time low .. I find for the moment CD extraordinarily good... Anyway better than even the most ardent analog lover would admit. As good as LP ? Likely ... NOT as good as Hi-Rez? Likely! Not as good as R2R? To my ears at least, likely too