I absolutely agree...
Digital audio technology seems to do everything we want - and to do so quite easily and economically.
This has pretty well halted serious research into analog audio technology.
And the reason comes down to practicality and demand.
And, yes, I do sometimes mourn "cool and elegant technology" - just because it's "aesthetically satisfying".
But I've also reached an age where I find it more satisfying to be able to play any album I want at the push of a button instead of searching for hours through shelves of CDs.
(And often finally finding that the one I want to play is "in the other room" or "out on loan".)
There are also what I would term "qualitative differences" - NOT referring to the ones in the sound quality or aesthetics - but in the topology of the formats themselves.
Sound waves tend to spread out in air... which makes it difficult to pinpoint them.
We DO in fact have a technology that allows us to "beam" audio to a single listener - at distance.
It is rather limited - but it does work.
These guys make it (although now there are others):
It uses ultrasonics.
There are "environmental and safety issues" to beaming microwaves around that are powerful enough to directly move air.
That's also the reason why many of Tesla's ideas about "broadcast power" aren't being developed... even though they could work.
Likewise, it is possible to use LASERS to directly affect air by heating, and you can use them to produce little plasma dots floating in the air.
However, there are "practical drawbacks" to a 3D display that heats up the room, generates lots of ozone, and will take your hand off if you try to interact with it.
Likewise, nobody wants, or would be allowed to sell, a stereo system that could literally melt your ears.
So, again, the limitation there isn't "what's possible" but "what's a good idea" or "what's a viable product".
Some of your other suggestions, while "do-able", have simply been rendered moot by digital technology.
Yes, you most certainly COULD store an analog waveform, on very tough and resilient media, using a LASER, and there are even good reasons for doing so.
(The last such proposal I recall was archiving some information by etching it onto thin Vanadium plates... which can be expected to last for thousands of years.)
However, with digital media, such things have been rendered "not worth the bother".
There are really significant benefits to digital storage - besides anything to do with sound quality.
1)
The information itself is digital - and so is not subject to generational deterioration.
Every time you make a copy of an analog signal - in any form - SOME change occurs.
Therefore, if you make a copy of a copy of a copy, eventually it "drifts"... and no copy will ever be "perfect to the original".
This is a problem that is inherent with the analog storage or transmission of data.
However, with digital storage, the "signal" that comprises the bits is entirely isolated from the information it contains.
So, if the pits on your CD "get a little worn", you can simply copy them onto a new CD, and the pits on the new CD will be perfect again, while the data remains unchanged.
(You haven't "copied the pits". Rather, you have read the pits, extracted the data, discarded the original, then written that data onto a new disc, with brand new perfect unworn pits.)
So, as long as you make a new copy before the old one becomes physically unreadable, there is NO generational loss at all.
2)
Going along with #1 is the fact that, since every copy can be perfect, you can make an unlimited number of copies that are actually the same as the original.
This allows everyone on Earth to have a copy; and it allows you to keep one copy in your pocket, bury another copy under a mountain, and put a third copy in a safe-deposit box.
Even better, the process of copying digital data has become quite simple, fast, and cheap.
I now have a copy of my entire collection of a few thousand CDs on a single USB hard drive that fits in my shirt pocket.
I can copy the whole thing in one day, for about $150, with absolute assurance that the copy is identical to the original...
And, by the time that hard drive becomes obsolete, and in danger of failing from age, I will probably be able to copy it all onto a single "super-USB-eternity-stick" that costs $5.
3)
Beyond even all that - digital data can be easily verified and CORRECTED.
If your vinyl album, or your LASER-cut Vanadium disc, gets scratched, some of your analog data will be FOREVER LOST.
You can edit out the tick caused by the scratch - but the tiny gap in the track where the surface was scraped away is forever gone - and they will eventually add up.
And, even more annoying to me, there is no practical way to test or verify that data.
Back when I had hundreds of vinyl albums there was no reliable way to "test my entire collection to make sure none of them had been damaged".
(So I always wondered whether, the next time I took it out to play, that favorite album would have "picked up a scratch" or "become warped".)
With my digital drive I can simply compare the entire drive to a backup drive - and know with certainty that every track remains exactly perfect.
However, since that takes time, I can utilize a much simpler method that is unique to digital data....
I can store a unique checksum for each album that is calculated from the actual data.
I can then instruct my computer to compare the current checksum of each album to the stored one.
By doing so it can tell me if any of them has changed much more quickly - without access to that second copy.
(In 1950 doing this would have taken a hundred engineers a thousand years; but, luckily, my new computer can do it in an hour.)
And, even beyond that, I can store extra information that can be used to actually REPAIR damage if it occurs.
The program that does this will automatically calculate the checksum, compare it, and repair any damage it finds - so I again have PERFECT files.
There was a recent "tragedy" where many "original analog masters" were lost in a fire at a storage facility.
If those had been digital masters, and were "stored properly", we could have simply "pulled out the backups", and replaced them.
(They would have been stored at a different location.)
These are qualitative issues.
There is no way whatsoever that you can make a copy of an analog signal that is absolutely identical to the original.
There is no way whatsoever that you can test an analog album to make sure it is an absolutely perfect copy of the original.
More advanced technology can get you closer... but you can never actually achieve it.
But, in contrast, making perfect copies of digital data, and verifying digital data with absolute accuracy, is relatively trivial.
Analog technology can certainly be improved, and doing so might be interesting, but most of the goals that are impossible for it have already been met by digital data.
This provides little incentive to go back to the old technology - except for those who do it as "an engineering exercise" or "a hobby".
(And, of course, those who, quite practically, hope to develop products to sell to those who do those things.)
Incidentally, our brains don't actually reconstruct the waveform...
Rather, they pick out specific details that they find useful or significant, and ignore much of the rest...
That's why certain tiny variations to the waveform are painfully audible - while other relatively major changes may go unnoticed.
Perceptual lossy compression works as well as it does because it recreates the stuff our brains pay attention to and discards the rest.
The only reason some of us find it imperfect is that we've trained ourselves to look for certain details that most people's brains simply don't notice.
(And, by definition, perceptual lossy CODECs are designed to faithfully reproduce the stuff that "MOST" people notice.)
Similarly, when you look at a cement walkway, you DO NOT "see all the gravel bits".
Various "mechanisms" in your brain "pre-screen" the picture - and only pass the interesting parts on to your conscious mind for "further analysis".
It is estimated that we only percieve something like 5% of what is "in front of our eyes" (the idea that "we see what's in front of us" is really sort of an illusion).
I suspect that the percentage of what we actually hear is somewhat similar.
Well we have here a treatise on what exists in vinyl analog, digital, and biological construction of the ear. I'm not so sure that the ear transmits digitally though. The hairs may respond to different frequencies and the sum total of all frequencies (all hair vibrations) in the sound is sent to the brain which reconstructs the complex analog waveform. What we don't have is analog technology that could have been; laser recording and retrieval on a medium such as ceramic or metal; laser direct heating of air to cause air wave flows; focused microwave energy to cause sounds to be created in the air almost anywhere desired. What I am saying is that analog development and innovative thinking was brought to a standstill in favor of digital.