When CDs first came onto the market in 1982 .......

Everyone was "blown away" with the perceived clarity of sound.
…
Is this on the money or am I mistaken ... ??

My advisor in 80’s said, “this technology is immature, I would stick with a TT for now.”

And it seems like he was correct, as the amount of things one needs to stream or do digital is still resulting in new equipment that is coming out to “Fix” things everywhere in the chain.

When they (CDs) work they sound good, and when they don’t then we have skips and drop outs.
But they did likely blow away things at the lower end… but less so at the upper end.

IMO

I started off with a pretty decent TT, so it was not really a fair comparison.
But all the CD players sounded OK.