How do you respond to this question?

All good answers, especially Czarivey's. But I'm reminded of the answer bank robber Willie Sutton gave when asked why he robbed banks: Because that's where the money is. I bought LP's for over twenty years before ever seeing a CD (in '87), and didn't join those who got rid of them and replaced them with the 5" silver discs. I had about 5,000 LP's by then, and wasn't about to do that, especially as I wasn't sold on CD's. I kept buying LP's for as long as record companies made them, which one-by-one they stopped doing, releasing new albums on CD only. My answer to the question is because that's where the (my) music is.

Some of it, anyway. I didn't stop buying new music when LP's stopped being made, and joined the rest of music consumers, starting my second collection. Being the Indi CD buyer at a Tower store (the only record store chain with buyers in each store, buying for that store only) for awhile enabled me to amass quite a music library for literally nothing. Buyers are given a copy of just about every new release (including reissues of old albums), and my music room was eventually over-flowing with somewhere around 10,000 of the damn things! I now pay for new CD's by trading in some of those promos at Amoeba Records, an incredible 3-store mini-chain here in California. The trade-in product manager at the Hollywood store is one of my former sales reps, and some of my trade-ins are promos he gave me as his Tower buyer!

Because I trust my cats.

... when I play vinyl, they scatter in fright at sudden musical sounds, then peer out from beneath the sofa - tails fluffed - searching for those scary instruments that have invaded their room.

... when I play a digital source, no matter how loudly or what instruments are supposedly being portrayed, they sleep straight through it.

Right now, mainly because my music server has crashed.

My dog is very much in tune with the digital when I play it. His ears twitch to the subtle nuances in the music. He does vinyl as well although pops and clicks or other forms of noise when present seem to bother him. It all gets his attention which tells me I must be doing something right.

Because frankly classical music reproduction simply breaks apart with digital. Even with stellar digital front end.