As someone who grew up in the eighties, I remember fondly the introduction of the Compact Disc.  Impossibly cool-looking, shiny discs, each apparently indestructible and capable of playing Dire Straits at unrivalled quality.  A few failed audio and video formats later, DVD came along and did the same thing for video.

All that time, the message, from the manufacturers, to the media, to the man in the hi-fi shop was “if it sounds better, it is better”.  And we listened to that message; and we heard that it was good.

But things started to change in the late nineties.  MP3 players didn’t sound better.  And once Apple married a cool, intuitive MP3 player was to a vast, convenient digital store, the music world changed forever.  Convenience beat fidelity.
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