AAD, DDD - Digital snobbery in the 1980s 

Erratum: Some streaming services have greater than CD quality, such as Tidal or Apple Music.

I was one of those geeky teens who looked for DDD on CDs. Good times.

Actually, for me the AAD label meant a precious CD I must buy. I noticed in during the first decade of this century that those CDs were sold or traded in sites like ebay to a much higher price, especially the likes of The Beatles catalog from 1987.

Oh wow that's unexpected but welcome, you broke the techmoan's monopoly of being the only Britton talking about media quirks no one ever heard about :D

The vast majority of my CDs are in AAD format. I go out of my way to find them. I'm thoroughly convinced they sound better...

Not owning CDs anymore? Nooooo! I never understood why people could get rid of media that contained music!!!! Started my cassette collection in '89, my vinyl one in '90 and my CD collection in '93. Still own every single one of them, some 35 years later!!! Yes, AAD CDs do sound better than DDD ones because they also do not suffer from the loudness levels that later CDs did. And yes, everyone now knows that even cassettes can sound a hell of a lot awesome when recorded on proper equipment and being well cared of. Long Live Analogue!!!

As I recall, our first CD was "The Nightfly" by Donald Fagan precisely because it was "DDD" and also because it was one of only a handful of CD releases. I say "we" because my (weathy) college roommate had the actual CD player with matching expensive stereo kit. I supplied the physical media music.

That's nuts. Why would I get rid of my CDs just because they're not the latest and greatest technology now?

The third letter may be always "D" for compact disc, after all digital discs were copied off a digital master, but digital masters were also used for analog recordings like cassettes, so the third letter did not always have to be "A" for analog media. "DDD" audio cassettes were a thing despite that the final product was an analog recording. See more here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t9Xe4V75z_Y.html I have a couple of dozen cassettes from The Masterpiece Collection with classical music recordings, most of them are marked with "DDD".

My Dad was one of the six people in the US that was into Super Audio CD or SACD. He built a full 5.1 surround system around it for the living room. Loved The Nightfly and Dark Side. Both sounded amazing, that high bitrate with good mastering made an unrivaled listening experience in the early 2000s.

Part of the reason why the SPARS codes were abandoned (at least temporarily) is that unscrupulous record companies would simply lie and emblazon old analog recordings with the "DDD" logo, and there was no enforcement to crack down on this misleading advertising. This was especially true with the large, inexpensive collections of classical music on CDs that started appearing in the late '80s, which also often lied about which orchestras actually recorded the music on them. These discs claimed to be "DDD" even though some of the tracks were even copied from old records, and you could hear the pops and clicks! And nowadays the opposite has happened, with Mobile Fidelity (MoFi) producing "100% analog" vinyl records for over a decade that were actually made from digital recordings. But even the golden-ears, digital-hating audiophiles couldn't tell the difference!

“Music was an event, rather than that something you put on while you’re doing something else.” I couldn’t agree more. Good music isn’t the paper on a room’s walls - it is the room itself.

Nice video, thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's interesting that, according to blind listening tests, most people could not hear the difference between SACD standard audio CD. It seems that the Red Book standard, and probably stereo records had already approached or exceed the limits of human hearing back in the 1970's, all good for music collectors until the 'loudness war' ruined the sound quality of most pop and rock CDs from the late 1990's, those early silver discs are often worth significantly more.

The Hunt for Red October is one of a few DAD discs I saw, and it sounds fantastic.

nice job! This brings back memories! The whole analog vs digital thing lasted a long time. And like you pointed out, it's ironic that now most audio people listen to, lossy compressed digital audio, is arguably lesser quality than a CD.

Feels like this should be a Techmoan video! Interesting departure from your usual 4 wheels based vids, but informative and entertaining as always :)

Releasing modern day music on vinyl is insane! All new recordings are digitally recorded and mixed. And then it's pressed on an analog medium because somehow some people believe it sounds "better" than the original recording... It's like saying listening to someone singing in front of you sounds worse than recording them onto tape and listening to it afterwards.

I am a car guy and a music guy. I worked in car business and now in music business. So great to see this. Also that it started with a Dutch CD, as it is a Dutch invention. I knew a bit about this. but you taught me some new stuff! I knew we always searched for DDD or at least ADD, and now I'm this old school tube amp bass player....

Always informative. I learnt something today. Cheers

Love the content. Fell in love with digital when I bought my first Realistic CD-1600 Compact Disc Player. :) Today I continue to be blown away by digital playback with awesome new R2R DACs and supercut 10MHz master clocks.

Excellent video,I'm a huge fan of your other channel !!!!!Obsolete formats and details are always interesting!!!!

I remember the times I used to pay attention to AAD, ADD, or DDD. When I want to buy new music, I search for the CD version, I do not have a streaming device connected to real speakers, I don't even know what they would be called.

Adding a little left field content - great. As an old bastard, I remember records...but now I embrace hi res flac files. Records all sold, CD's ripped to flac files and yes no magic in the event - but the music should be what we want....but I do know audiophile junkies who listen to the equipment rather than the music - takes all types.

While I was looking for a good CD player at the time I used a DDD compilation disc to compare players. Think it was a Naxos title, lots of orchestral, classical music. My first DDD CD - and still a superb album - Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. 1985.

Now I really had to "get a grip" in my CD rack and check the AAA label.

Excellent video more of these please 🙏

Very interesting, never noticed those letters before :) Just quickly checked my CD's and found Samantha Fox - Touch Me CD from 1986 with ADD marking and couple of Synthesizer Hits & Digital Melodies CD's from late 80's with DDD markings on them :)

Hey, I enjoyed! Please, make more content like this. Thanks!

I used to hunt out DDD CDs. One of the best was Introspective by the Pet Shop Boys. One of my favourite albums to this day!

Amazing, two of my biggest interests combined! Thank you very much. And OMG, what a beautiful pressing of Equinoxe!

Remember when the family got the first CD player, my mum pointing out the letters saying they're looking for DDD CDs. As an annoying 10 year old I recall saying that the stuff they buy had already been recorded in analogue anyhow. You've only got to listen to "True Love Ways" on "From the Original Master Tapes" CD by Buddy Holly to realise that a recording from '58 can pretty much outperform "all-digital" recordings when recorded and mastered properly (I remember being given a demo of this against a Jamiroquai song - both of which were really good, but head to head the production quality was day and night. Proper studio gear has been ahead of consumer stuff for years, but it all depends on what you're playing and who was twiddling the knobs where.

I remember these markings from my first CDs and hadn't really noticed that they'd fallen into disuse. I started buying CDs in the late 80s. I had been put off by the high price but was finally persuaded when Deutsche Gtammophon (part of PolyGram) announced that their new releases wouldn't be in any other format and I assumed that others would follow suit. At the time, DDD often was a badge of quality, at least in sound quality, because it meant a recent recording, mastered using modern methods. Many labels were reiussing their back catalogues on mid-priced CDs and weren't always taking much care in doing it. AAD or ADD discs were often excellent but there were some with badly compressed sound and the original tape hiss audible. This was very obvious, even on my very basic Sony Discman. If you collected classical CDs, the Penguin Guide was an absolute must as it covered these issues. I still have all my CDs but rarely play them now. I refuse to get nostalgic about LPs or cassettes but do miss the way that spending money on a physical format led me to value my music more.

Wow, it's hard to believe that CDs came out already four decades ago, right when the Commodore 64 did! It's also hard to believe that we already had this reasonably high-resolution audio quality at a time right when the Sound Interface Device (SID) chip of that same computer was so much less capable than this! But it seems to me like most people didn't really get a hold of CDs until about 4 years later.

Had the vinyl "jazz at the pawnshop" famous recording from Sweden recorded live 1976. Later got the new release on CD, which was wonderful. Years later, they remastered the digital release from the original analog tapes, but while the new digital mastering technology was better, the analog master tapes had deteriorated, so no real net gain of quality. Then in 1996, they remastered with very advanced technology that seemed to correct the analog master deterioration, and actually improved the product dramatically.

I remember the big fuss that dire straits made, because the brothers in arms album was supposedly the first DDD album made.

I think we shall see the comeback of CD's soon just like vinyl did several years ago. It blows my mind how CD's ( let alone SACD's ) sound so much better than nowadays streaming services ( some are up to the CD standard tho...almost that is ). I must admit that i still do listen and buy music on CD's. However, it is very difficult to find new artists on CD's. I'd also like to add here how even old CD players, vintage audio in general, sounds better than most of the new stuff, even from the big names like Yamaha, Pioneer,....who even cheeped out in quality :(. Lucky are the ones who still own some of the high quality components ( Yamaha Centennial Edition, Pioneer ELITE (Urushi design), Sony ES (ESPRIT), Technics G-Series, Onkyo Grande Integra,...are just some to mention here. Rarely today you see such a built quality using high quality materials such as Titanium, Copper, Molybdenum, Wood, Gold, Ceramic,..just to name some. Today, to get some of that quality in built and sound, you need to explore some ultra expensive High-End brands that are just unobtainable to the most of us.

Interesting topic, thank you! I've learned as an electronic music producer that analog or hybrid mastering is the best thing today.

The Record Labels used the introduction of the CD to make a killing from their massive back catalogues. Cashing in by releasing "classic" iconic albums on CD and charging a premium price that quite frankly was almost 100% profit. CDs were the new Golden Goose. Like lemmings loads of folks run and jumped over the cliff Taking the headfirst plunge into the digital CD world, ditching their prized vinyl collections at knockdown prices as they fully embraced CDs and made snide comments about the uncool people who clung to vinyl. FFW to the 2000s and we see the same thing happening with many of those same people who offloaded their CD collections and embraced streaming or returned to vinyl. Personally I have always embraced the new formats- CD, Mini Disc, SACD, Streaming. I never offloaded my vinyl and never offloaded my CDs. I just don't understand why some people have to be all in on a single format while dissing everyone who doesn't follow suit. Each format has pros and cons. I live happily in a multi format universe.

Surely modern LPs must be DDA (as there can be very few if any analogue recording & mixing studios left) which makes a nonsense of their supposed "warmer" sound?

Thanks for the nostalgia on this long forgotten taxonomy. I still got a classical CD with a big red warning label on it, saying that it only should be played on high end stereo equipment, otherwise the hifi will be destroyed. Guess what happend to my low end stereo? Nothing! 😂

2:05 Peter Gabriel did it before the code was widely used in 84. For his 4th Self-titled album (or “Security” in North America), released in 1982, a lot of the releases had a sticker mentioning “Full Digital Recording” or marketed as Digitally Mixed and Mastered.

I have a few 80's jazz vinyl records that proudly display "Digital Master" on the cover, as if that made the vinyl less analogue!

I was into Classical music as a teenager, and I remember being disappointed when I discovered the audible difference between AAD and DDD - that of the background hiss. Thereafter, I would opt for DDD recordings over the AAD/ADD. I appreciated the utter purity of sound in a good digital recording; with a good pair of headphones or speakers, it was as close to being in a room with the orchestra/performers as you could get. It was only later that I learned to appreciate older albums for the performance, rather than just the sonic purity, and so many "A"s found their way into my collection, in all genres. Great bit of nostalgia... thanks mate!

I have one CD with DAD. Simple minds. Street fighting years. Release from 1989

My first DDD disc was Sting - Nothing Like The Sun.

I'm old enough to have had 8 track, LP, cassette and CDs of a lot bands. I purchased my 1st CD player in '87 and was absolutely flabbergasted by the quality of the sound. The music was so clean there was music in songs I'd never heard before. Jump ahead 11 years and I purchased my 1st DVD, Hell Freezes Over, by The Eagles. Again I was absolutely flabbergasted but by the visual quality along with the audio quality. I have never heard of these AAD or DDD standards before, never looked for them, I just listened to the music and judged for myself. Thanks for the video, I learned something today.

I remember the Vancouver band (artist?) Delerium feeding the audio of one of their albums through some sort of tape process to "warm" up the sound. Not sure which album that was, but it was sometime around 15-20 years ago now.

Dire Straits Brothers In Arms Compact Disc had to be DDD.

I watch so many similarly themed videos Rasta but none have given me something new and surprising like this. Considerable value added star

Great seeing you move sideways on a techno-mechanical segment. I guess you could argue that cd's can be played in recent model autos, so therefore you are still good-to-go with the whole subject. Well done my friend!

It took me 30 years to finally own a digital recorder, mixer, and mastering hardware in my own hobby studio! Only the other day I was like, ahem, finally I can boast DDD, lol. Great channel Little Car

Yes, this was a big thing back then. Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits was the show off Album back then. And the Digital albums definitely sounded better back then because the analog albums were often mastered from mastering tapes that had some generations on their back. After a while new releases of iconic analog albums were made from their their master tape and sounded so much better.

I have heard CDs played through a friend's custom made valve amplifier hi-fi. You want warm? He's played music to me that I would never listen to usually (stuff like 1990s acts such as Savage Garden and George Michael) and it sounds impeccable. Gorgeous low bass tones and crisp treble. No harshness at all. Most people listen with their eyes when it comes to vinyl being the be all and end all. But true, the 12" x 12" artwork of albums is the best.

Sadly, this is missing a DAD joke...

Dark Side of the Moon with AAD on the label is by far the best CD version. It's just a direct re-master into digital, with no one messing around with the mix. That goes for all pre digital recordings. AAD everytime. I also have a huge LP collection starting from the 60s. I do not have pops or scratches on my records as I looked after them, and now own an ultrasonic cleaner. I enjoyed your video, I'm not trying to be nasty.

This is what inspired me to make my album - ATD - back in 2014.

Vids like this really put a lump in my anorak.

Wasn't expecting this from a car channel lol

Never knew this!!! Thanks

My AR speakers bought in 1988 still proudly proclaim "Digital Monitoring System" on their fronts, whatever that means. It is just ordinary two way speakers.

Great video! I was working in record retail when the CD appeared and there was immediately a craze for DDD. So many customers passed on great recordings of the past on CD in favor of new digital recordings. It was frustrating for those of us who knew that the older recording often sound very good on CD and they were now minus clicks and pops of the LP era. Another thing inf favor of AAD or ADD CDs is that they tended to be less expensive that full digital CDs, so those of us who were upgrading our LP collections to CD had a great time. I still think CD is the way to go for music. CDs I bought in the 80s almost always still work and sound fantastic.

Pondering analog vs. digital, as well as, say, flash vs. magnetic media within a digital workflow, I'd been thinking about these exact markings from the 80s for the last couple of days - so I knew about them, but the video popping up now was a nice coincidence :)

Ha, my copy of "Get a Grip" is labeled as AAA! Never noticed before.

Working in a record store at that time, I experienced this ridiculous snobbery first hand!

I remember these markings and a little brochure that came with my family’s first CD player (a big deal back then!) that explained them. Also some other now-forgotten features of CDs, including index marks, which I saw used exactly once.

Nice little video. If you decide to more videos on audiophile topics I might even subscribe til Little Car as well. Judging from your CD collection you have what it takes. 🎶🙂💿👍

The biggest major problem with current (steaming) music is that the vast majority is so heavily "dynamically compressed." This lowers the level of extremities within the sound. The reason for this is that it makes it play louder and louder tracks are streamed over quieter ones. Oh yeah, and even if you pony up the money to get it on CD, the CD's audio will be just as dynamically compressed, so don't expect something great there either :(

Interesting video! Looks like you might say much interesting stories about A(/V) also. Some people repeat opinion that 1st digital recordings sounded poor due to not matured A/D converters

Personally I think there's a place for both analog and digital in high end audio in 2023. I've listened to modern vinyl records on modern turntables, as well as 24-bit 192kHz FLACs on high end DACs, both sound great.

Hey, I saw on your video a CD I own of "Jean Michel Jarre Equinoxe" that was also put out by MFSL on an Ultra Disc remastered 24 KT Gold plated CD. It was also an AAD recording! I am a believer in good, fun audio. As they use to say, "Don't though out the baby with the bath water". I love both mediums basically, Vinyl LPs and CDs both, I use and still collect both. In fact just last year I set up my turntable again after laying dormant covered in a cabinet for almost 30 years. This is because, at the time, I moved on to CDs, as I did with 8 tracks and cassettes earlier. I also got tons of Vinyl LPs I started collecting in the very early 80s, MFSL was my go to for sound quality. Then MFSL came out with the Gold Ultra Disk 24KT gold plated CD, most are AAD unless they are from a digital master. I'm am an Audiophile person and I now listen these days to both mediums as I feel they both got something unique to offer on their own. I enjoy Vinyl LPs, one main reason is that they are just so much fun to play, handle and physically admire, forgot how much fun this was. I also later added a DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD player. Of these two last mediums, I've found the sound quality on the DVD-Audio player has the best sound I've ever heard for music quality and sound. Unfortunately, it's hard to find music for these two mediums at all these days, especially the DVD-Audio. Now the Super Audio CD player is not as consistent in sound quality it seems, I found that if an album is poorly remastered to begin with, putting it on a Super Audio CD doesn't make it sound any better, in fact the poor mastering can make the poor mastering more apparent, because you can hear all the mistakes they made. An example of this is "The Dark Sound Of the Moon" by Pink Floyd, the Super Audio CD sounds of this album sounds inferior to my other versions, the CDs and even some of the LPs I possess. It is just what it is! Great Video, keep it going, enjoyed your video.

Good explanation thanks. Being a computer engineer for 50 years, I guess I'm Digital Equipment

As a schoolboy in the 80s I remember clearly the bragging rights I had with Dire Straits Brothers in Arms being a full DDD recording. My first CD was actually Jimmy Page, Outrider. It was AAD or ADD from memory. Initially I had Brothers in Arms on cassette, and got the CD a couple of years later when we bought a CD player. I remember my neighbours and my brother all gathering around as we compared the CD quality to the cassette, which was quite dramatic in the quiet parts of songs. We also tried to compare the DDD disc to AAD discs. Mainly looking for the “noise floor” like we did with the cassette comparison. Some thought they could hear the difference, but I never could….. we also compared INXS The Swing, which was AAD, and had a lot of sudden quiet spots in the songs, and again, I could never tell. But that still didn’t stop the bragging rights about DDD discs! I always wondered why modern releases of old CDs didn’t carry those codes anymore.

0:07 Wow! That's Bernard Haitink conducting Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam (now called Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in English or Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest) in 1985 & '86 (released in 1987), playing Beethoven's Symphonies 5 & 7. One of my all time favourite Philips discs. Thank you for your very mention.

I remember looking for a DDD cd back in the day. The first one I had was Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms. I couldn't tell the difference and most of my favourites were AAD.

Must admit that for decades, that third “D” did appear redundant, so it was fascinating to learn that plans existed to use it for analog mastering as well. From what I recall, hardcore audiophiles (and my musician roommate who hated audiophiles) pretty much opposed digital right from the start. Part of the problem was that relatively affordable CD players ($300-$400) in the mid-1980s did sound bright, but as DAC technology improved, much of this tinny sound was alleviated…vinyl lovers will probably still say “nope”. I think a couple things hurt SACD and similar media, with one notable factor being the youth market’s demonstrable apathy. In the late 1990s, downloaded mpegs allowed kids to start putting their whole (cheap but illegal) Zeppelin catalogue on one CD ROM despite what most anyone would consider blatantly poor-quality sound. When iTunes came out, bit rates were still inferior to that of CDs but better than what folks were downloading from Napster and certainly sufficient for most humans. However, aside from any “hipster” influence, the resurgence of vinyl was due, in part, to its perceived superior sound compared with compressed digital, which in turn possibly prompted the streaming/downloading industry to review digital quality, hence, streaming at 20 billion bits/ 200 trillion kHz. Another problem that plagued SACD & DVD Audio was the continual cost prohibitive nature of compatible CD players, never mind the media itself being initially pricey. Anyway, one thing to consider is that older CDs escaped the “loudness wars” of the past 20 years. So despite all of the technological advances in mastering, digital equipment, experience, and such, Japan’s early 1983 CD version of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” is arguably the best of the lot, irrespective of bit and sampling rate. In terms of the general consumer, audio quality is just one of those highly subjective things that doesn’t have the draw of the visual, which in terms of movies, has gone from VHS to DVD to Blu Ray to 4K in the past four decades. Meanwhile, for physical media (hard copy), 16/44 CDs and vinyl are still the primary options.

I didn't even know this marking was a thing and I was a kid in the 90's, when this was used. But that's probably we still had more cassettes back then than CDs. And when we had CDs, it was already 2000's and vast majority of those were discs with burned MP3s.

I remember in the 70's they recorded direct to vinyl disc master, all these years later all I bother with is Spotify, sounds good-enough to me!

5:40 That caption was so much on point. My exact thoughts. It's all the more absurd these days with vinyl releases of new albums, virtually all of them recorded and mixed in a DAW running on macOS or Windows. Oh, and a dedicated mastering for vinyl maybe, yes. But done on the same gear, only with different settings!

Interesting. I know the crackles, pops and hiss you're talking about. Usually because the general music buyer didn't look after their records or equipment properly. I still own all my vinyl , cassette and CD collections but never coveted DDD recordings . In the 90's most of the well known bands (proper musicians with guitars , real bass & drums etc) recorded their best selling albums on analogue machines, so either AAD or ADD is what was the norm. Maybe classical music fans that bought CDs preferred DDD but I don't remember that , in fact my friend that was into classical and prog rock preferred vinyl as it was 😊

I’d forgotten all about that! Didn’t there use to be ‘chapters’ on CDs as well? (I don’t mean the tracks, I mean sub-divisions within the tracks).

Another reminder of getting old! 😂 But never mind, I didn't care much about AAD or DDD. Most of the CDs I bought where analog recorded anyways.

Well, I never knew I was recorded in analog but mixed and mastered digitally, but here we are.

I'd like to see a return of use of the SPARS code on all recordings (including downloads) with one addition: The adoption of the letter "M" (meaning "Mixed Analog and Digital") to the code. "M" would indicate that an album contains both analog and digital recordings and/or mixes since an album can contain both. The track list could use a marker (such as an *) to indicate which tracks are digital and which are analog.

Wow, never ever spotted this even though I’m still a fan of using CDs - but then I only really got started in the mid-90s 😮

This got me curious as to whether Eastern Bloc countries also got in the digital craze. Sure enough - my Klassische Trompetenkonzerte CD from East Germany reads "Digital - Aufnahme, Digital Recording, Enregistrement numerique", while my Czechoslovak Mendelssohn CD reads "Stereo ADD" and the Soviet Alexander Sitkovetsky - Zello reads "ADD".

Streaming has less quality than the CD? Free spotify maybe, but a platform like Qobuz that goes up to 24bit 192kHz is NOT less quality than 16 bit 44.1 kHz

Oh man - I remember all this!!!

I was a musician and audiophile since 1969. It did not matter the route of the recording process for the most part. CD was superior for one simple reason; the 1000 play was as good as the first. PERIOD. Digitizing from reel-to-reel tape to CD was still infinitely better than vinyl, yes there was a noise floor of the tape, but eliminating the needle grinding away vinyl and all the noise and dirt pops from this antique process was always a winner. i played my first CD in 1986 after 13 years of high end stereos playing vinyl, and I never played a record again.

Very interesting story. We face this same question today, with material being released on vinyl, but the source is digital. Also. As someone who was born in the 90s, it's interesting to see how production techniques changed, almost instantly, as 1989 turned into 1990. Sure there was the occasional hangover, but by in large it was as if the world was saying, "that was stupid, what were we thinking?"

All but one of my CDs was AAD. The DDD disc was Flaunt It by Sigue Sigue Sputnik from 1986. One of my AAD discs clearly demonstrated it was sourced from analogue tape. It had bad print-through.

I made it a point to purchase a DDD as my very first CD in 1986. It was Beethoven's 9th on EMI. My 2nd and 3rd CDs were Dark Side of the Moon and Zeppelin 4. It's hard for me to imagine the appeal of vinyl today. Vinyl is not "warm" at all.

I remember Dr. Barry Cooper. He was professor in my home town of Aberdeen. That whole Beethoven's 10th symphony business was highly spurious in my opinion.

Since late last year I have decided to go back to buying Music on Physical Media for better quality and actually have the Albums, EPs, and Singles in my collection and not have the risk of them getting removed from my library

Vinyl is king, and is now back to being the best selling music medium

hahahaha - yes I fell for DDD too! My son is now an AAA nerd, with an expensive record deck and new pressings of obscure LPs - where did I go wrong? 😂

I consume music in nearly all it's formats. I stream when I want to hear random music. My entire CD collection is ripped and stored on both my computer and my phone. I still buy CDs from my favorite artists and bands. Finally, for the really special albums, I buy them on vinyl. People should consume music how they want, not just because the majority of people do it a certain way. You are right though, it's more of an event and experience when you listen to vinyl records. I feel the same way about books. I have a Kindle, but for my favorite books, I buy the hardback edition and keep in on a bookshelf.

I don't think it was entirely snobbery; for the first several years CDs were a lot more expensive than LPs, and most people already had turntables with the best specs and styluses they could afford. At first there wasn't much advantage to analogue recordings on CD media, so why pay a lot more money for them? It made more sense to selectively spend on DDD recordings until they eventually became standard, by which time A/D conversion had also improved.

As I recall McCartney in 1982 released his album Tug of War. It.was a digital recording.

I find it sad that the 3 letter indicator is not really being used much anymore, just like the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo... because i personally always found it interesting as it made the whole disc mastering a lot more transparent. And i always tried listening for some subtle differences between these various mixes. And i realized.... DDD CDs did not sound better per se. They were just a LOT more dynamic with a much much lower noisefloor. But i did (and still do) love the sound of ADD and AAD discs. Especially AAD since you can be sure it's basically an old original mix put on CD without any changes.

Interesting and you remember it that way, I remember it being the analogue was more "real" than digital recording . Strange how much it all changed then