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

I'll just weigh in that having read many of the posts, there are lots of things being confused here.
1. Confusing Upsampling vs magically creating more bit depth2. Confusing why one upsamples (its not to get more info)3. A vague notion that digital is suddenly good. Some of it has been good for ages, much still is awful, and most of that from the studio, and in Rock/pop4. Confusing chips with implementation. Differences are in the latter.  Gimme some of the old 18/20 bit R2R DACs any day. Hell, don't give them to me, but please sell them to me. :-)
5. And just to make my point, it still doesnt matter because i can make both PDM and R2R sound good or sound bad. (note: PDM = 1 bit = sigma delta, it works like your fuel injection)
But yes, overall things are improving, will continue, and red book is good enough But it does make all our engineering lives very difficult due to the proximity of the sampling rate to the nyquist limit.  Give us some filter slop room, please!  Why does auto-correct want ot make "Nyquist" = NyQuil?
G
ps: i have info on some of this on my blog at sonogyresearch.com

wtf -
I own the dac that mzkmxcv often brings up and praises. It is good, but it is not perfect. Neither is any other dac that I have owned. As for the Benchmark, it is quite forward sounding. I agree with him that it is very clear, but it does not evoke the "you are there" feeling that I get with my other dac. Which raises the point that even though modern dacs are greatly improved, they can sound quite different, and different models may appeal to different types of audiophiles.

Absolutely. I have a Berkeley Ref 2 DAC here with MQA, and a T+A 3000 HV, arguably the best SACD player made. The difference is the recording, Not Redbook vs. SACD. And I have heard the new MSB DAC's are even better, albeit at a price. Perfect Sound Forever. Go CD. Lol.

I think both stories are true. There are a lot of remasters people don't realize as well as better DACs.

The frequency response, compression, and channel separation of vinyl, CD's and SACD have been shown to be explicitly different.

SOME SACD transfers were shown to actually be remasters. CD's when they first came out were compressed in amplitude and L to R separation.

HOWEVER!! It is also very true that this generation of DAC's plays 44/16 MUCH better than before, and I can't tell you why.

I had an ARC DAC 8, and it was a prime example of this. It played high resolution files beautifully, as well as upsampled files, but 44/16 was pretty mediocre.

I upgraded to the Mytek I use now, and that difference vanished. It played all formats better than the DAC 8, but also, it no longer depended on the resolution. I've heard this same effect with a couple of other DACs so I have to believe it is now more wide spread.

If I was forced to use older DACs today, I'd be pretty stuck on getting high resolution files or SACD. That's gone now. I'm happy with high res, but I'm also much happier with 44/16

Look for a silver disc revival like we have seen in vinyl. There will be the dollar bins and there will be the ones that fetch big bucks. Meanwhile, if you got 'em, spin 'em and enjoy !