As dissimilar as vinyl and tape are relative to the original source, well calibrated analog playback machines are capable of sounding very good. I would consider someone wed to analog playback media an ocular-influenced audiophile. As someone who has spent the past 31 years recording and mixing professionally I can attest that good digital conversion sounds far more like what the microphone hears than any analog medium I have ever worked with, including Studer and Ampex tape machines. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love what those machines do to the sound, but for me fidelity= accuracy, and accuracy to the performance is my measure of fidelity. I enjoy vinyl as well, but my enjoyment of it comes primarily from the ritual and nostalgia. There is also something endearing about the sound imparted in mastering: the compression and limiting used to increase the signal to noise ratio, the faint crackles and the reversal of the RIAA EQ curve. It takes a some judicious, creative processing to master a record that sounds *really* good, and much of that goodness never existed in the performance, recording or mixing... the venerable Fairchild 660/ 670 mastering limiters striking a balance of vertical and horizontal limiting is a sound all its own... the EQs chosen to make low frequencies sound richer without adding any more actual energy through transformer and inductor non-linearities... all that stuff that makes a record sound like a record... it's cool.
