CD's when first introduced may have been marketed as perfect sound forever, remember searching for those rare DDD recordings? I did and suspect most others did too. Why did CD's take over the market, because most vinyl record producers were cranking out piss poor quality product, I was on average returning 1 out of 4 LPs for pressing defects, warps, clicks and pops! No such problems with the new technology. I attribute the sound issues of brightness and sterility to be the fact that the DACs were still immature technology. Some of those early CDs sound pretty good on more modern players we have today. Another feature that early CD players had that I DO miss and aided in the acceptance was the convenience of the "music calendar" and programing the tracks in whatever order you wanted!
When CDs first came onto the market in 1982 .......
Everyone was "blown away" with the perceived clarity of sound.
I might be wrong (hence this post) but my recollection was the major difference between a CD and it's vinyl analog was merely volume.
CDs were mastered with an audio stream turned up to 1.2v (?) whereas all analog recordings (vinyl, tape etc.) had been mastered using an analog audio stream of 0.8v
Is this on the money or am I mistaken ... ??