High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

Redbook indeed is at a new stage of awesomeness.  High Rez will not die because:
1) it’s marketed at Audiophiles, and we are always looking for tat sonic holy grail.  The general public could care less.
2) while not all high Rez recordings are true improvements, there are enough of them that once heard, continue to whet the appetite for more.  When it’s possible to close your eyes and really imagine that you are in the room with the musicians, as I have with several DSD recordings, then I feel that I have crossed to the other side

Totally agree Eric.
I was truly shocked a couple of days ago when I put my Sony Discman back into my system and fed it into my Ayon S3 streamer/DAC.
It really let the music flow in a way those silver discs have failed to do in the past for me.
May have to pull my cds down from the loft where they are stored.

Agree. VEry good and affordable DACs have abounded now for several years. My digital sounds great, has now for years. High res is just a novelty for me. No need.  CDs get ripped and streamed,never played.

the return to R2R dacs, with modern thinking, has shown just how good 16/44 can sound. It does have it's limitations, though.
It's when those revised thinking R2R dacs are used with the higher data rates, that's when it really takes off toward good digital.

Totally agree. DACs are finally getting things right. Although upsampling has been used for at least 20 years it is only recently that the higher quality of the upsampling/filtering has improved enough to really make digital more analogue sounding.

Alternatively many folks have found that quality upsampling in a software like Roon can overcome many of the deficiencies in some of these older DACs.