Modem quality?
Cd and cd players are obsolete, and thats a good thing. Wonderful when it came out, but then, hey, it wasnt "perfect sound forever" as promised, what a surprise. Cd is a mediocre format to say the least, I havent used a cd player for 6 years.
Every blue moon we need an update, a new format with extended resolution, dvd is on its way out, streaming of video is quite common, Apple TV is wildly popular, no need to buy a movie you only want to see once anyway, I use Spotify every day instead of my quite large music collection on my harddrive, and through Bryston it sounds smashing. I am enjoying the music, thats all.
I just bought a blu-ray player and to see the bitrate go from 9 kbps to 35 kbps on a movie is nice, thats a difference you can both hear and see.
Whether a cd is 44.1 or 96 khz really isnt important, the 44.1 can sound better than the 96 khz, you never know.....