I would love to join in – but having been informed I need hearing aids, I guess my days of Hi-Fi are behind me, so I can only talk in the past.
Thse days, i can’t hear air leaking out of an inner tube!
TBH, music recordings many years ago – some were good, some were bad. If you listen to The Doors stuff, the recording is pretty shoddy, as was Lou Reed’s Transformer. The Sex Pistols and Stranglers stuff also seems to have been recorded low fi.
Some stuff is really good ( when I could hear it :() but there is a modern trend to record everything “loud”, (in a very spinal tap way, at 11) as in expand the mid range, so that relatively the high highs and low lows end up are less definable.
Also , stuff is being recorded to sound good on the media it is played through – generally iPods.
Several years ago, when I was spending in hi-fi, I linked up my ipod to a musical fidelity amp/ B&W speakers. Comapared to the recording on a CD, the iPod was rubbish in reproducing a good playback. even on Loseless, it wasn’t great. Via airplay etc they now sound better (or I can’t hear the difference). However , in a plane at 30k meters, who cares.
But vinyl or CD. Sorry purists and luddites – CD every time.