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

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.

True, but it was immature process as well.  Some records, used to make CDs had wrong frequency correction - intended for LPs. In addition many records got digitized with less than perfect A/D clock producing jitter, that cannot be removed.  The only way to remove it is to digitize again, if analog tapes still exist.   

As for different volume - I suspect that "volume wars" were a necessity, since CDs were, because of size, widely used in boom boxes, cars etc. where full dynamics of recordings were not welcomed (buzzing speakers).   Same way TV sound is horribly compressed since most of people used tiny TV's speakers.

SACD, intended for better reproduction, had ability to bring back full original dynamics, but greed pretty much killed the project.  Todays LPs also carry this promise, but world also seems to go in the opposite direction with more people listening to MP3s.

My first experience with CD’s was somewhere around the mid 80’s when I purchased my first CD player by Sony and I thought it sounded great mainly due to the clarity of the format and lack of the background noise inherent in records that could have been cared for better at the time. Party’s and beach cottages made it difficult to keep records in perfect condition.

While still listening to LP records I started to purchase a lot of the records I had from the 60’s, 70’s and more current in the CD format and didn’t slow down for about 15 years when I turned back to buying LP’s almost exclusively. I don’t think I ever thought that CD’s sounded better than LP’s but enjoyed the ease of the format and new releases were not as readily available on LP’s during that period.

Fast forward to today and I find my original AAD CD’s to sound better and warmer than the CD’s that recorded originally in the 90’s and early 2000's in ADD formats and of course the compression of the Loudness Wars didn’t help the sound of the format. Although Dire Straits Brothers in Arms in DDD was phenomenal. While listening to LP’s is my desired format I still enjoy listening to the old AAD CD’s and MFSL and Analog Productions has done a great job on their remastered Hybrid SACD’s.

I enjoy it all.

I was attracted to CD’s and digital because wow from analogue drove me nuts. Underwater pianos were particularly nausea-inducing. Sour violin sections drove me a bit over the edge, too. The trouble was, those first CDs just didn’t have good enough tone. Too much bass. Too much treble. Not enough midrange.

@tgilb I always thought of “Brothers in Arms” as the poster child for what was wrong with early digital recordings, but now as I’m using an R2R DAC I’m gonna pull that back out and see how it sounds now.  Of course I can always stream it on Qobuz, but I’m curious to see how the CD holds up now with better DAC technology.