“The sad thing is that a whole generation of kids are growing up believing that music is supposed to sound like it’s coming through a water pipe.”
As opposed to the whole generation of adults who believe that music is supposed to sound like it’s coming through a pillow.
While both technologies can be done right, most people haven’t heard it - only their own generation’s perfered version of wrong.
And then there’s people like me who believe that while, in theory, the CD format’s sampling rate is too low, I like the lack of snap, crackle and pop (or tape hiss), and my 43 year-old ears apparently can no longer hear anything above 16 KHz, anyway. Heck, good quality MP3s generally sound just fine to me, assuming they were created in high quality mode and with a sufficiently high bit rate. Most of my music listening these days is done either in the car, where the noise level is usually too high for a really great listening experience, or from an MP3 player with in-ear phones while at the gym.