All recordings have loss, nothing unique about digital in that regard. The point I was making was simply that once CD quality (16-bit, 44hz) became mainstream and only modestly more expensive hardware could get into 24-bit / 96khz range you were past the point where almost anyone – even trained “golden ears” listeners — could notice a difference from further improvements in that regard. Given real-world limits, the threshold was lower for most people.
The reason I mentioned compression is because you’d find people who’d say digital recordings didn’t sound good but misattributed why: the problem wasn’t digital, it was either low-quality codec implementations, constricted bit-rates[1], or technical flaws like the MP3 format’s inability to precisely handle sharp attack sounds like cymbals. If you did an A/B test with those, yes, people would notice a difference but the same was true of uncompressed audio or compression using newer codecs.
1. e.g. pre-VoLTE cell phone audio sounded terrible on most carriers unless you edited your phone’s settings to increase the bitrate, because the carriers were trying to fit more customers onto each cell tower. A little more bandwidth and it sounded much closer to landline calls.
Sampling only limits the highest possible frequency, it doesn't quantize over time like a lot of people expect it to. Unless frequencies above 22khz are somehow an integral part of your listening experience you can use 44khz and suffer no ill effects.
Anyone talking about sampling and showing you a graph with stair steps is misleading. No DAC would be able to produce such a perfect stair step in the first place, let alone be tuned to do so on purpose.
The reason I mentioned compression is because you’d find people who’d say digital recordings didn’t sound good but misattributed why: the problem wasn’t digital, it was either low-quality codec implementations, constricted bit-rates[1], or technical flaws like the MP3 format’s inability to precisely handle sharp attack sounds like cymbals. If you did an A/B test with those, yes, people would notice a difference but the same was true of uncompressed audio or compression using newer codecs.
1. e.g. pre-VoLTE cell phone audio sounded terrible on most carriers unless you edited your phone’s settings to increase the bitrate, because the carriers were trying to fit more customers onto each cell tower. A little more bandwidth and it sounded much closer to landline calls.