[jillesvangurp]

Even just getting a decent DAC can make a lot of difference. There's a difference between playing a CD on a decent setup or a cheap portable player with 5$ headphones, shitty cheap DAC and sloppy electronics. With the right software, you can even emulate a lot of distortion and warmth of analog equipment even. Some more expensive consumer grade hardware (Bose is a good example) takes a lot of liberty with processing the sound that gets send to the speakers.

It's basically the same as iphone owners claiming their cameras are better because they get such nice crisp colorful photos. Which depends on roughly the same kind of lossy algorithms that electronics manufacturers use to make cheap hardware sound awesome. Compress, filter, boost, etc. It's a lossy process. It's intentionally losing recorded detail for the effect. The audio equivalent would be the wall of sound type sound associated with 1980s pop music. Sounds great on a cheap brand walkman ripoff (went through several in the 80s).

CD recordings have historically been optimized for cheap equipment and FM radio. The storage medium is not the problem: the sound is intentionally compromised when the master is created already. That's why remastered recordings are a big deal these days and also why a lot of LPs sound better (different master, generally better equipment used for playback). Same recording, but a better masters optimized for different purposes. One sounds better than the other but people get confused about why that is.

[wheels]

> the wall of sound type sound associated with 1980s pop music

"Wall of Sound" recordings are primarily from the 1960s. "Pet Sounds" by The Beach Boys is the quintessential recording in the style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound