When is digital going to get the soul of music?

I think it's a relative question. For years, analog off of records and tape resolved much more resolution - just like analog film reolved more detail than digital! Same deal.
Another point of issue, is that most home audio speaker systems aren't dynamic and nibble enough to accurately portray what's on the source material, in a dynamically realistic way. That's what I find anyway. Basically, you're mostly dealing with "non-perfect systems", that have holes and flaws somewhere along the way. So how can you capture it all? Always compromises, regardless

In reading a self description of PS Perfectwave, I read the astonishing statement, the CD is not a digital medium, it is analog. Go figure.

I believe the processs of reading the data via a laser can be argued to be an analog process.

The trouble with the PS Perfectwave, that they did their best devising a chip that interprets the CD content into digital, 1,s and 0s. The 47 Lab transport reads the CD like it is and my AN DAC brings it to living music.

I think the Audio Research DAC 8 might have just done it.

It's a redux of the classic tubes/SS dilemma but they've sure got an intoxicating blend of the attributes of digital and analog going in this unit for sure.