is the sound of vinyl due to the physical process of the turntable?@guitarsam - not due to, in spite of. From a noise perspective, turntables only contribute to the noise floor. What a better (but not necessarily expensive) turntable provides is less background noise.
The sound of vinyl is due to the process of the stylus being dragged through the grooves and mechanical energy being transferred to low-level electrical energy. The cartridge/tonearm/wiring/phono stage/preamp symbiosis AND turntable noise floor is responsible for our tail wagging response. All other things being equal