Dave is right.

The technology has now reached the point where techno wizardry can and does rely on how our brains make up the difference.

An excellent example is a small Bose bluetooth speaker that the reviews reckoned had bass it had no right to possess. We are all aware that under a certain frequency we don't know where the sound comes from but at a slightly lower frequency and below, we don't know the pitch either. The Bose unit vibrates a bass reed at the same frequency and our brains bring it in tune. This and other medical aspects of hearing and neurofunction are used to ensure high quality.

Now... It is a fact that keeping the waveform of analogue true from origin (needle) to destination (brain) has been a wet dream industry for years but frankly we don't need it any more. Digital compression used to be crude (16 bit can only provide 16,384 y axis references on a digitised waveform) but 32 bit provides over four billion.

If a studio recording is less than 25 years old, it has been digitally encoded anyway, even if you are presently listening to it on your Linn Sondeck. The human ear, no matter who you are, cannot differentiate between 32 bit encoding and pure analogue if a decent DAC is decoding and amps, speakers etc are the same.

Two things here. My Rega record deck has joined my CD player in the cupboard and I recently offloaded loads of hifi gear on Ebay. I link Amazon Unlimited and Apple Music through an Airplay receiver with a decent DAC into my hifi. In the other room, an Amazon Alexa is coupled to a Ruark speaker. My vinyl? 99% of it is on either streaming service and if not, I rip it into iTunes in 32 bit and upload it into my iTunes Match.

Russ Andrews Ltd sell a kettle lead for over ?2,000.00 to power your amplifier. They say that the reduction in rf gives you a better bass response. (From the substation in town, said cable is protecting 0.00001% of the cable length...) and their platinum USB leads, carrying a series of 0 and 1 pulses does something sweet to the treble. (Don't even begin to go there.) Needless to say, they have fallen foul of trading standards. They also know if you are thick enough to believe their claims, your embarrassment will have you convincing yourself there's truth in their sharp practice

I applaud anyone who has a hobby preserving and playing analogue sound. If you want to pay silly money and you have the money, great.

But luddite nonsense about technology not advancing is frankly silly. Reality is, software adequately fills in the gaps. ?50 nowadays can give you a sound that took thousands a few years ago. Even my car uses antinoise to give me and my passengers individual hifi triangle reception, and that was only a ?200 option... It reduces car noise too. Still, its only a car so isnt really that good.