> That is surprising!
Maybe not, as the same is true for me. I've lost a lot of my high-end frequencies, too much playing loud rock-n-roll in bands over the years. And I'm 67 and male, so my high-end is shot by default anyway.
As a result I can't hear the high-freq quantization noise of digital recordings (unless they're low sampling rate). But I can hear the difference in how transistors vs tubes reproduce loud sounds, since they approach their power limits differently. Transistors tend to "clip", tubes tend to "round", and it sounds quite different.
Yes the sampling rate has improved since the first CDs. Digital is, for me, the way to go.