Every era of audio history has produced its own version of "we've finally arrived."

In 1927, Harry Warner of Warner Bros. reportedly said, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Sound in film was a novelty that serious people weren't worried about. In 1897, Lord Kelvin — one of the greatest physicists who ever lived — declared that radio had no future. Thomas Edison, who invented the phonograph, reportedly dismissed it as having no commercial value before reversing course entirely.

We audiophiles wrote our own chapter of this book. In 1982, the CD arrived under the marketing banner "Perfect Sound Forever." That phrase aged poorly. Our community spent the next two decades cataloging exactly what was imperfect about it — and many of those complaints were legitimate, even if the explanations were sometimes creative. Then high-resolution audio arrived and that was going to be the final word. Then streaming was supposed to be the end of the quality conversation one way or the other. MQA was announced as the definitive solution to delivering high-resolution audio across networks. Each moment felt like arrival.

I've done it myself. Systems I've built or heard that felt genuinely complete — until I heard what came after.

The state of the art at any moment is best understood as the leading edge of a moving target, not a destination. It's one of the things that makes the pursuit interesting. Every generation of serious listeners has had access to the best audio they've ever heard, and every generation has been surprised by what came next.

We are living right now in what will someday be remembered as early days.

What a remarkable problem to have.