I don't really think there's a lot of room for improvement.

Just taking the past five years, for example, I don't really think there's much difference in sound between top-end mixed and mastered tracks in 2004 and ones in 2009, whereas between 1994 and 1999 you can hear quite a lot of difference.

Listen to the level of detail, stereo field utilization, EQing, and so on in something like Hybrid's Morning Sci-Fi from 2003. I don't think there's anything that "tops" that today in those areas, although certainly there are things that equal it. The average level of mixing and mastering quality might be a bit higher today than five years ago, but I don't see much difference at all between what's achievable by engineers working at the highest levels of experience and equipment.

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Originally posted by ONDRAY It's already allot further then what the general consumer uses (like, SACD & DSD). Like every technology and every era, we will look back and think to our selves "how the hell did we listen to that, it sounded so blah".

Yeah, that stuff looks incredible in terms of pure "numbers," but the current standard of 44.1 khz is already right at the upper limit of human hearing, certainly for people in their 20s and older. Even if you assumed that some people could hear those ultra-highs, most speakers don't reproduce anything above 22 khz anyway. You can talk about greater bit depths lowering the noise floor, but what use is that anyway with the current trend of filling up the headroom as much as you can? Most people aren't audiophiles looking to precisely reproduce the nuances of a classical music performance, which is the sort of person that SACD is targeted at...

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Just taking the past five years, for example, I don't really think there's much difference in sound between top-end mixed and mastered tracks in 2004 and ones in 2009, whereas between 1994 and 1999 you can hear quite a lot of difference.

yeah it was much better 1994-1999. many of my absolute references for good productions are from exactly 1994.