Analog vs. Digital

The popular recording of “Love is a Battlefield,” by Pat Benetar, is almost mono. There’s very little stereo separation or spatialization. When CD’s came out, there was a marketing effort to make digital recording a differentiator to boost sales. I think Michael Jackson’s “Bad” album was the first one to brag that it was a “DDD” album: digitally recorded, mastered, and finalized. The recording, of course, was the last big holdout. But I couldn’t hear any real difference between that album and others released around the same time which were “just” “ADD”. I guess, because at the time of transition, analog tech was mature, and digital was still brand new, and we were comparing the best of a limited technology versus the first production-ready version of the future. I wonder if you could hear any difference now? I’ve noticed several songs lately which have intentional saturation noise in them. Crazy that people are intentionally reinserting analog limitations back into digital recordings. It’s like putting polaroid filters in snapchat.