I agree that the recordi ng engineers determine the quality of the final product. When CDs first came out they had a distinct advantage over vinyl in noise floor and dynamic range,but it got bastardized to enhance the commercial aspects and the result was that a lot of recordings suffered. If you go back to the 1940s and 50s you will find that there were multiple versions of the RIAA curves and those recording differed wildly in quality for the same reasons that digital did. All things being equal, CDs offer a much better format than vinyl since you can set up a turntable almost anyway you want and it affects the sound drastically.