@snilf +1
At 42, I, too, regard the mastering and quality of the source material to influence what I will listen to. For instance, some of my favorite Jazz albums include Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby, which IMO is best on the Japanese SHM SACD, and a John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman 45 RPM ORG pressing. I won’t listen to them any other way.
That said, I’ve found the preferred medium also depends on the quality of each person’s setup. Before I was an audiophile, I played MP3s because I didn’t know better. When I got my first turntable, a B&O Beogram, it changed the way I perceived music, but not the way I listened to it. It was a joy because it didn’t have the jitter, but neither the turntable or MP3s provided the fidelity that is in my setup today. The turntable drove me to invest in a starter DAC and explore lossless files, which drove me to better turntables and cartridges, which drove me to better DACs, streamers, signal regenerators, and linear power supplies, which drove me to even better turntables and multi-thousand-dollar phono carts... you get the pattern here. It’s gotten to the point that my digital and vinyl rig are now of fairly equivalent caliber, where the digital can sound 100% analog and refined, and where it truly comes down to the source material.
That said, to have a truly analog-sounding holographic experience, it is easier to get there with vinyl for less money. I’ve found many DACs and streamers, while often able to be resolving for lower prices, are not able to reproduce the presentation of the music unless significant investment is made. There’s a lot in the digital chain that contributes to this, from noise in the wifi and Ethernet signals, noise in the power line that cause jitter, cheap noisy chipsets in cheap streamers, DACs that don’t have a great clock, digital cables that alter the information, etc. Many folks don’t realize what all of these amount to - they may not hear the noise or jitter, but it just prohibits the end experience for as good as it ought to be.
The funny thing is that most people who get into the hobby look at vinyl setups as a steep investment (and it sure can be), as it’s easy to get a cheap DAC and start streaming to get started. But if a friend came to me and said they had $2-3K to spend either on a used mid-fi analog setup (TT, cart, stage, cables) or a used mid-fi digital setup (streamer, DAC, digital cables), I would point them the analog route in a heartbeat.
