When is digital going to get the soul of music?

This may sound stupid. I have listened to my daughter's(does that date me somewhat?) car stereo. She played Elton John's Greatest Hits. Listening to songs that I am familiar with, it hit all the right notes, had great separation, and maybe added some details that I hadn't noticed before. My friend did the same, in his car, with Neil Young's Greatest Hits(or equivalent). You see, in analogue, that would indicate that those cd's were superior. The problem is playing those records at home(in analog)would kill those cd's. What gives? (And they wonder why I don't understand cd?)

Analog has limited HF extension? Come over to my house buddy and you shall change your mind. Not all records have limited bandwith.

Try listening to a few Mapleshade CDs. I'm personally not crazy about most of the music - I have around 10 disks - but the quality of the recordings is amazing. I'm not good at describing sound with words, but 'getting to the soul of the music' sounds about right. Recordings like these show what digital is capable of.

Baddabob states;

Once you get into the higher leagues, redbook gets much better. If you have a $2500 set of speakers and a $800 CD player, then you really have $800 speakers. It costs more to buy a top notch CD player than a vinyl rig of equivalent quality.

My experience does not match yours Baddbob. Conversely, I have found that one advantage of Digital is that it is relatively inexpensive to get high league sound. I, for one, can confirm that I am unable to hear audible benefits of a higher quality CD player or DAC converter. (Although, no doubt there have been some very badly performing CD players in the past, particularly in the 80's...perhaps I am lucky enough not to have owned a bad CD player with poor quality DAC conversion, filtering and jitter etc. that is audible)

I have made the following blind tests:

1) My ordinary and inexpensive Sony CDP CX 235 CD changer analog ouput through my AVM 20 pre-amp analog circuits.
2) My Digital Coax output from the same ordinary and cheap Sony CD CDP CX 235 changer through my Anthem AVM 20 192 kHz/24-bit DACs.
3) My somewhat older Grundig Fine Arts CD player with a DAC7 direct to my active speakers. (Grundig CD player has a built in volume control)

The inexpensive Sony's use cheap single bit DAC converters running at a very high frequencies and then filtered to create the anaolg signal and remove high frequency noise...a no no for audiphiles and admittedly a design where CD players have had real audible problems in the past (mid 80's).

The results:
All three options, playing a variety of music, through my ATC 100 Active Studio monitors are indistinguishable to my ears provided volume levels are well matched.

Since I have many CD's and I hate the fuss of changing the CD's in the tray, as you might guess, given the absence of audible differences, I use the quite ordinary Sony CD changers as my source and my Grundig Fine Arts CD player sits in the closet even though it is probably one of the more expensive CD players I have bought ( at the time I bought the Grundig player, a DAC7 chip was hailed as a significant improvement in CD sound).