When and how did you, if at all, realize vinyl is better?

I was never completely convinced that vinyl sounded better than digital.  Back in the 80s I was quick to embrace the CD.  The absence of pops and clicks was enough for me abandon records.  Do to my modest analog setup I had never heard the true potential of vinyl.  CDs were a no brainer and seemed to sound better.  I played CDs exclusively for over a decade.  Sold my turntable but fortunately kept my records in storage.  Over time, as I acquired better speakers, amps/preamps etc. and as I started paying more attention to the criticisms of digital vs vinyl, my curiosity got the best of me and I purchased a basic VPI turntable.  Also at the same time I bought a VPI record cleaner.  Owning the highest quality turntable/tonearm/cartridge I had ever had in my life AND having the ability to properly clean my records were revelatory.  Clearly, my records had never sounded better and I spent countless hours revisiting my old record collection.  I ended up upgrading my analog system to a VPI Aries table with improved tonearm a cartridge.  The records just sounded better and better.  Still, I was not convinced that analog was better than digital; just that it was a lot better than I had ever experienced.  It wasn't really until about of month ago when I got my new Vandersteen Quatro CT speakers and listened to my first record that I finally "got it".  Now I finally understand what all the fuss was about.  My system had finally improved to the level where the sonic benefits of vinyl made itself obvious.  The more revealing my system has become, the more sonic characteristics made themselves known.  The speakers were the final and biggest step that convinced me.  Of course now that I have such revealing speakers I am also curious to try new digital sources as well.  So it goes....

Convinced that I would never go back to the clicks and pops of vinyl, I gave away my turntable and then let a friend stop by and "cherry pick" my album collection. He walked away with a pretty sizable stack. Thankfully he didn't care much for Lee Morgan, and he already owned lots of Coltrane! But  a good portion of my Blue Note collection was decimated. Oh well ...

Then my old college roommate decided to get back into vinyl. He picked up a Denon AVR, basic table, and Pro-ject phono preamp to go with B&W bookshelf speakers. The first time he cranked it up I was blown away by how much better it sounded than anything I'd heard on my all digital system!

There was a richness in sound and texture that I hadn't realized was missing. To me, the difference between digital and analog is like the difference between really good frozen yogurt and ice cream. Each is very good in its own right, but one is clearly better than the other (IMHO).That's how I found my way back.

Ralph, you have been probably the most consistently knowledgeable, helpful poster here (the whole forum) for the past decade or more (despite your biases - many of which I share).

The post above is very interesting.  Something along those lines definitely jives with my experience with digital music - there is something unnatural about it that no amount of expense or technology can seem to completely eradicate.  

With really good digital you won't notice it right away, which is one reason rooms with digital sources can win "Best of Show" awards, but it is always there in the end.

This includes digital recordings of vinyl made at high PCM resolutions and sample rates or DSD128 and studio-quality equipment.  You may think it sounds indistinguishable at first (I did), but eventually, once you are trained, you can hear, immediately, what it is that never fails to get to you over time.

The experience points to information uncorrelated with the input signal, as you say.

The way I look at it: the ticks and pops (which can be minimized with good phono preamp design, as a poor design will have a lot more ticks and pops) exist in space separate from the music. With digital, the coloration is inherent in the music itself.

Regarding the former: if the preamp is unstable, ticks and pops are exacerbated. This is nothing to do with bandwidth- its possible to design a phono preamp with 100KHz response and still have it be stable.