A good example of this is the redbook standard set in the late 70s early
80s for the then emerging CD format. The standard was fine, but it took
until the late 90s to figure out that distortion in the time domain
(jitter) was a major factor
Jitter is interesting. I mean, yes, we can certainly point to it as one measurement that has improved over time, and Redbook had a markedly big jump in audible performance in the last 10 years.
Is that enough? I mean, we never proved it really, and we don't actually have any idea of what is audible, or if there are other parameters around jitter which are important. I mean, AFAIK, there's not even an agreement from manufacturer to manufacturer as to how exactly jitter is measured.
So if jitter IS the problem ... what is inaudible?