With the kind of recording and mastering we get on modern albums, I think the formats are irrelevant. When commercial pressures lead to over-compression and resulting distortion on a great album like Mark Knopfler's last, it's time for me to go back to my older CDs.
This is not entirely right! I can quote more than 20 recordings that have come out in the past 2 years that are excellent, but again I listen to a very broad genre of music.
Coldplay - Rush of Blood or Parachutes
Remember Shakti - Zakir, John McLaughlin and others
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms (remastered version)
Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
Brazilian Bossa - Brazilian Bossa
Pink Floyd - DSOTM
Dave Brubek - Time Out
Patricia barber - Modern Cool
its not so much the commercial pressures, rather the willingness of people to buy crappy music that has downgraded the quality. This is one of the reasons that I am not in the "iPod or mp3 changed the world for good" camp. It made is more accessible at a great loss of quality.
Comparitively CDs are still the best source for music and I tend to invest in them a fair bit.
The good thing about SACD and DVD-A is that a little more attention is paid (hopefully) to the mastering and they don't compress the living daylights out of everything on the disc.
A lot of attention is paid to the high rez recordings. But again the remastering takes a lot of effort and hence you pay a premium for these things. I have a bunch of originals as well as the high res versions and I am still torn between these two, which is a good thing and is a testament to the remastering efforts. But like you said, the engineer should have done a good job.
That apart, since most recordings are made in pure stereo they're best listened to in stereo.
Absolutely agree!