I don’t know why analog sounds better, it just does.
To begin with in my experience it is more difficult even today to have digital right especially with low cost component, than analog right with a low cost component....
Then....
At low cost level analog will sound better most of the times....
The reason is simple, most low cost dac sound unnatural...
My first low cost dacs were so unnatural that i was thinking to kill myself.... 😥😛
When people dont know how to make something sound right they call the electronic component that sound better among others, when compared in the same conditions, their "taste"....
But almost any good component, analog or digital, will deliver a good S.Q. if it is rightfully embedded in the first place....After that we can always have our "taste" for one, analog or digital, among the others.... But it is not significative of any truth for most of us...It is only an arbitrary "taste"....
The choice of components is subjective then, the way to embed them is objective facts and rules....
At the end there is not ruling "taste" in audio, because when the instrumental timbre rendition is natural, there is no more taste for "warmer" or "cleaner" sound... Timbre is not warm or clean....These adjectives pertain to the analysis of sound not to the perception of musical instrument...
Then i want a system able to give me the more natural music timbre, not warmer or cleaner sound, just the more natural timbre...Timbre is not a pure generic sound out of any room....
Timbre perception was and is the key to listening experiments about audio system and his not only speakers dependent but room dependent....
Warmer or cleaner colors are related to only frequencies hues, but musical timbre for his definition ask for 5 characteristics and is then a very complex phenomenon, linked not only to speakers, dac, turntables, or amplifiers choices but mainly to the room acoustic, and to the other 2 embeddings controls :
- «Range between tonal and noiselike character
- Spectral envelope
- Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release")
- Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation)
- Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration»
Wikipedia