Were CDs the peak of physical media?
>high quality, 16-bit with dithering and 44.1kHz ought to be enough for anybody
>Red Book audio standard was very strict making sure record labels didn't fuck around too much and devalue the brand
>no DRM or copy protection unless you disregard Red Book like that Sony rootkit and others
>high compatibility, only one real major compatibility break in the format's lifetime with CD-RW/mp3 CDs.
>portable, lightweight and cheap
>easily rip and burn data (yes I know CD drives and burners came out well after CDs were established), only disadvantage was recordable/erasable CDs were never very popular and had issues, were never a complete replacement to floppies
>relatively durable, and while scratched easily modern players can easily get around this. Only longevity issue is disc rot.
Every other popular physical media format had much worse issues, vinyl is inconsistant quality, takes a high end setup to sound good and is generally inconvenient. Tapes are extremely inconvenient due to being linear with no random access and have degrading quality. DVDs are fine but only 480p and have inconsistent masters, mostly anamorphic widescreen (720x480, not square pixels) and lossy surround sound. Blurays look good but have crippling DRM issues, they are still difficult to play on computers even 12 years after the format came out.