Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

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 :

1. «Range between tonal and noiselike character
2. Spectral envelope
3. Time envelope in terms of rise, duration, and decay (ADSR, which stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release")
4. Changes both of spectral envelope (formant-glide) and fundamental frequency (micro-intonation)
5. Prefix, or onset of a sound, quite dissimilar to the ensuing lasting vibration»

Wikipedia

I have found people who prefer digital say digital is better. Those that prefer vinyl say just the opposite. That settles that.

😯😮😙😌

IMO: if you think vinyl is better, then you don't have a good dac. Once you get a very good dac, then you will need a great sounding expensive turntable to compete with digital and then I still prefer digital. 
There's much more to consider than just sq in these 2 formats: availability and longevity. Most of my jazz and blues groups didn't produce vinyl for any of their new music. As for aging: Let's play an album and a cd or ripped music each 100 times. Vinyl gets noisier after each play, digital does not.

I’m willing to bet that more often than not audiophiles that greatly favor records over digital, particularly cds due to their general availability since basically Avalon was released (first cd my dad bought at a shop that used to exist in Evergreen, CO called the Blue Spruce), is their first experiences that got them hooked on building an audio system were likely with LPs. I say this because my dad regularly questions if my Node2 streamer with my new MHDT Orchid tube DAC can come anywhere close to a cd player. He often associates streaming with highly compressed mp3s much like the early, and largely very bright DDD cd recordings. He had a Technics record player in the early 80’s, but cds are what hooked him. So much of our preference are imbedded from life experiences that changed us in profound ways, much like great albums like Peter Framptom’s “Framptom Comes Alive” and Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” have been those hooks for so many like myself (among many others). Night Moves instantly takes me back to backpacking trips with my dad in southwest (most memorably Anasazi cliff dwelling canyons). This passion we are engaged in is emotional at its core and therefore very personal. This is why the majority of people I talked to about my system smile with a blank look on their face because they didn’t develop their passion around music and building their own audiophile rig and that’s ok. It solidifies for me how personal my system is to me and how I created a place in this world I can escape in some ways immersed in sonic beauty that brings spine tingles and tears at times. Once in while I truly am able to share it with others and that is priceless as well. This thing of ours drills to the heart of what being human is all about.