I’ve found its very easy to convince yourself that digital is better. It can be made to sound good enough by any reasonable (& some unreasonable standards) with on occasion some really excellent qualities, that can easily make it make it irresistible - if you let yourself get drawn into the convenience. This last is the great rationalizer & stimulant to ignore the inconvenient truth analog can be made to represent. Yes, as others have pointed out here it can certainly be a PITA but it still is what it is. Get it all right and there is unquestionably a delicacy, humanity and a rainbow of harmonics easily discernible that the very best digital can simulate quite well in the same way a fabulous reproduction of a painting can suggest a great deal of the original’s beauty. The human imagination is a glorious thing and can convince us that the reproduction has more than enough beauty for our needs. That’s not wrong necessarily - just not the deeper truth we need to understand. Let me put it another way. I wear glasses. When I take them off & look at my hand or anything else nearby (I’m myopic) I can see that textures have more detail and are truer and more beautiful as so much more detail is noticeably clearer. With the glasses on I can see greater distances, read better & navigate through spaces far better, but it’s more like looking through a video camera. The images are sharper but less organic and/or natural as well as less detailed. I choose to ignore the greater visual fidelity for the advantages & convenience my glasses offer. I’m not listening to music however which is supposed to be transporting. If you choose not to surrender to the most innermost virtues of music, analog can provide - then don’t. But persuading yourself it’s every bit as good, simply isn’t true. I still very much like looking at paintings with my glasses on but if I want a really good look, I take them off & get close.
If I had to defer to experts I would refer to the late Harry Pearson and his unofficial successor, Jonathon Valin of the Absolute Sound. HP said at one point, comparing the two formats just led to heartache because digital could never come up to the same standard - one just had to accept digital on its own terms. Exactly. Valin is listening to the latest, best digital now (as a secondary option) & finds it very good & enjoyable indeed, but admits, even so, his analog rig is usefully & obviously better in ways he’s not prepared to forego & does not see any horizon where that will change.
