There are several issues represented here and that is confusing the issues and arguments. Digital vs vinyl. good hearing vs bad or faulty hearing. Etc. lets clear up some things first before really getting into the "is digital or vinyl actuall better than the other" argument.
1. As an Electrical Engineer specializing in analog/digital design, I can tell you absolutely there is no way a digital signal is as accurate as an analog signal. The digital medium acutally takes samples from the signal and then converts that digitized signal back into an analog wave form. in and of itself, the "sampling" will specifically mean that some of the signal is lost, because it was no sampled. Now if the signal sampled is a simple sine wave, then you can extrapolate ahead and "guess" what the next piece will be with about 100% accuracy. However, with an analog musical signal, there is no way you will be 100% accurate in your extrapolations and some data will be lost. This is not to say that you can't sample the signal at such a high rate of speed that you will not be close. As a matter of fact, the higher the sample rate, the better. The problem with this is that the recording equipment may sample at such a high rate of speed, say for example 44kHz or 92kHz, but the digital to analog converter or your specific CD players itself may not be at a matched sample rate and again, you lose signal. In any case, you are still losing some data. For analog, all of the signal is there. To me, it really comes down to convienience of operation and also how much one wants to spend on digital or analog equipment to meet their goal of sound reproduction and accuracy in their homes.
I do recommend that people go and have a detailed hearing test performed to determine what their hearing is now. You will be suprised what you will find out. Second, it really comes to preferences, but if you really want to see (hear) if there are differences. Go to a really good high end store or a person's home with stupidly expensive great high end analog and digital playback equipment and get the albums and digital recording and A/B them. One more thing, and this is really important. It also depends on how the recording was done in the first place. Music that was digitally recorded and then converted to analog from the digital master to an album has the inherent flaws of digital recordings. i.e. it was sampled and reconstituted. A recording session that was recorded with analog recording equipment and then placed onto an album vs the same recording session recorded with analog equipment but then made into a cd, well that would be an interesting listening session. either way, enjoy the music please. When it sounds and feels to me as if something is wrong or missing, and I'm getting listening fatigue or shifting, then well, something is not right. Also, I do have vinyl that was poorly recorded also and sounds terrible. So, it can go either way. My CD/DAC system is wonderful and sounds pretty darn good and I can listen without fatigue, unless the recording is bad. However, my analog playback system sounds much more open, airy, detailed, etc. but, vinyl listening means that I have to clean the disc, and get up every few minutes to turn over the album. So, there are drawbacks for both playback mediums.
Go to a store that has both in high end equipment and listen for yourself.
just enjoy
