A very good ENGINEERING explanation of why analog can not be as good as digital..

You’re correct, I spent $6K on my CD player and $28K on my analog set-up. I won’t spend more than $20K on CD playback but I will spend up to $40K or $50K for LP playback.

Until you’ve heard my system or my friends systems who have near SOTA CD playback, you haven’t heard great CD sound, only inferior CD sound. My cable manufacturer friend and I hated CDs until the mid-2000s when the equipment improved sufficiently to make us realize how good it can sound. I am not part of an unwashed mass who accepts crap sound. I am also a part time recording/transfer engineer and have friends who are world reknown mastering engineers. Too bad you haven’t enjoyed the pleasures of fine CD playback (or maybe what you’re listening to was poorly mastered).

Analog recording attempts to reproduce faithfully the original sound, and if done properly, you can get it.

Digital recording attempts to reproduce approximately the original sound. By using a large number of bits you can get as close as a one million of a percent difference, but never the exact thing.

So, the correct statement is: digital reproduction can be as close as one wants to the original sound, so small the difference that indeed it could not be detected by ear, but it is never an exact replica.

So, digital recording and reproduction can be as good as analog, but NEVER better.

Exhibit A - digitally remastered cassettes. The best of both worlds? High dynamic range and low noise without all the digitalis produced by the digital playback system. The digitally remastered cassette demonstrates that it’s not (rpt not) necessarily the digital medium per se that’s the problem, but the CD playback system. Tape is a natural medium. It breathes.

Well, I really liked recording to DCC because it sounded so much better than CDs.  I think it is a lot closer to analog sound than most digital solid state device recordings (computer, recording devices).  My own DCC recordings sounded similar to my Tandberg RR recordings at 7 1/2 ips. 

It literally doesn't matter.  As in, it cannot matter less.  Why do cinephiles make a huge deal out of seeing a movie that was shot on film projected from the 70mm print??... because they love the way it looks.  It's romance.  A 1972 Porsche 911 is a fraction as fast as a new Subaru but even car guys have enough sense to know that it's a waste of time to debate those merits.  That's why they have different forums.
Save it.