The article doesn't mention the HDMI sound, which was always high quality. The upgraded audio is from the 3.5mm jack, which means you can now run two high-quality streams at once - something that some people have been requesting.

You made me think about how audio has been generally far ahead of its technical development, so in theory maybe this just means that 44.1k 16-bit PCM is so ubiquitous and good enough that it is considered a pinnacle even though options that are better exists. I love my 192 kHz sample rate on my device, but admittedly this is for audio recording and ham radio, so, almost a scientific instrument really.

A $25 platform for scientific instruments would have tremendous benefits!

My feelings exactly when reading the title. "CD quality" was great in the 80's and good in 90's. In 2010's it's certainly no high standard.

CD quality audio is good enough to play back through someone's old TV though isn't it. If you can afford speakers good enough to make the best of even this level of sound then they're probably not targeting you with the product. They're also going for high efficiency which may be part of the balance here.

Yeah, certainly CD quality is good, I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that it's not anything to write headlines about (literally, in this case).

That a $25 USD computer can also have on-board audio that is CD quality is of note though isn't it? Probably not headline worthy like you said.

Promoting a cheap computer for education/learning by demonstrating it playing Quake 3 and 1080p video - what a strange combination.

So it is capable of immersive 3d and high resolution video of fluid flow. Not strange at all.