That's what Dolby was for, to reduce tape hiss, did a wonderful job too. But a few engineers chose not to use it, I've got an old Pat Travers, Crash and Burn that brags in the liner notes that he did not use Dolby, and it sounds great actually.
Some of the original digital recordings, or should I say analog converted to digital recordings, were not good. It took the engineers a while to get used to the entire digital process. I recall way back when CD's first came out, some were completely unlistenable.
But speaking of recordings of the last 5 years, I suspect it depends greatly on what genre' you are listening to. Anything considered Pop Music will most likely be over compressed, and contain less frequency extremes, made to sound good on any music device. Made to sound good on iPhones with tiny ear buds, on car stereos, and whatever the young folk are listening to these days. But a modern Classical, or Jazz recording may be a completely different thing. Using digital recording techniques to get the best recording possible, with 32 bit masters in the megahurts sampling rates, using minimal compression and preserving both frequency extremes, it is possible to make probably the best recordings ever made! You've just got to find the engineers who are trying.
