not much light in these "this format is better than that format" debates.

I think the first consideration must be given to the personal interests of your sources: do they want to sell you something? Any prognostication from a manufacturer is suspect in my view because my wallet is involved.

The second consideration is that your ears are digital: those little hairs (coccli) in your inner ear are each tuned to a specific frequency, and each nerve cell 'fires' (a 1 in the digital world) only when the nerve cells' coccli responds to the presence of its specific frequency. So a digital source only has to offer a resolution greater than the resolution provided by the coccli in your ears. Other distortion products may come from the analog side of the CD/DVD player.

The third consideration is that I have both DECCA and DECCA LONDON LP's in my collection, and the DECCA LP's will ALWAYS sound clearly far superior to the DECCA LONDON LP's when the performance was recorded in England or Europe because the DECCA LP's were mastered in England while the DECCA LONDON LP's were mastered in the USA. This was because US Customs always had to touch the pressing masters sent from England, which always damaged those pressing masters, so DECCA resorted to sending tapes which would not be damaged by Customs' touchy-feely. Interestingly enough, US performances on US LP's would sound better than US performances on English/European LP reissues. So the quality and the "slant" of the mastering/remastering most probably accounts for ALL differences that are perceived between LP's, CD's, etc. etc.