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

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What's curious though...

Excellent post!  That's pretty much my thought process too.  Whether it's "the truth" or not is debatable but at least it's rational, justifiable and, equally to the point, a useful to guide how I spend time and money.

Just one extra comment, though: there seem to be a lot of generalisations bandied about (not particularly on this thread, I should say) about digital audio where what's true for (e.g.) AES/EBU is assumed to be true for USB, Ethernet, wi-fi, etc.  Presumably this is on the basis that "they're all digital", so they all suffer from the same pros and cons.  That way of thinking seems a bit lazy and doesn't make much sense to me, given that the protocols are quite different at many levels -- hardware and potentially software.

I admire Antoine's almost (dare I say?) fanatical devotion to the pursuit of the best possible sound quality from digital sources, even though some of the things he's doing might not be predicted by textbook theory to make any difference.  Since I don't think I'd ever have the patience or will power to go to those lengths myself, it's very interesting to hear about what works well and what doesn't.