listening to a variety of D&B today and I think the most striking change from the 2000s to today is the average level of attention paid to the mix and mastering.
sound design tools certainly got easier to use and far more capable, but folks learning to properly manage things in the frequency domain and deal with phase interference issues seems to be a major factor. there's a noticeable improvement even just in the past decade.
there's also this funny part of the timeline where people suddenly obsessed over side-channel compression in the late 2000s and early 2010s, particularly on snares, often massively overdoing the compression ratio to the point of aggressive ducking.
then people figured out you can apply the side-channel automation to a filter to just make space for the impulse in the frequency domain, rather than wideband ducking, which also lets you tightly phase match the attack impulse. big force multiplier.
although idk if this works as well in other music genres that don't have super short snares.
house and techno went through that phase (pun fully intended) of ducking massively on purpose as a stylistic thing.
still funny to me that Eric Prydz overdid it on purpose to take the piss out of ducking, then the song became his biggest hit and he hated it. I'm with him on that one. it's the musical equivalent of frosted tips and brightly coloured sunglasses lenses.
@ChrisJohnRiley have you heard Hoffman's stuff?
14 track album
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
Chris John Riley 
Philipp Pixel