Why is digital audio so complicated? Where did it all go wrong?

[Borgen]

This reminds me of a blind test report I read from a UK hifi magazines on amplifiers some 30 years ago. They conducted a blind test of around 8-10 amplifiers towards an audience and there was one amp that won by quite some margin. Interestingly, they showed the measured frequency response of the amplifiers as part of the report. Most amplifiers had relatively flat respons over the 10Hz-20kHz band except one, which basically was ok in the 1kHz-10kHz band and was swinging a lot outside this band (yes it was the one the test group preferred). It seems to me that people like a bit of imperfection and I guess this is what the LP gives you.

...or is it that the digital audio with DAC sampling gives a lot of high frequency noise that you can avoid with a LP playing into an old fashioned pre-amp/ power-amp combo??