Caution: this post contains opinions (not that any of the others didn't!)
This thread has gone pretty much the way the Vinyl vs CD, Analog vs Digital debate always goes. Opinions are given anecdotally, technical data is presented, specific situations are cited, and opinions are again given anecdotally. It ends the way it begins because the question of "Which is better" cannot really be answered by an individual listening to commercial releases.
The reason is, what is being compared isn't just Vinyl or Vinyl Rips vs CDs, it's the entire audio path from microphones to Vinyl or CD release, the playback mechanism, right down to your ears, and while some of that path is obviously common to both, the complete path to each release medium is unknown, not at all guaranteed to be identical, and may not even be related in terms of historic time, and may, in the case of those "remastered" projects, be intentionally changed/improved/ruined. There are often different people involved with different ideas and goals. In fact, we don't even know from what so-called "master" the project was "re-mastered" from. It could be the original multitrack (not likely), the two-track master, a equalized master, a safety copy, or whatever is available. It might have to be cleaned up with restoration processes and noise reduction. Is it any wonder they end up sounding different?
As to preference, what's being compared isn't just the sound of each, but the entire experience of playing the recording and listening to the sound. The Vinyl is large, touchable, has visible grooves and bands, must be carefully cleaned and handled, and the process of playing it on a turntable couldn't be much more physical and visual. You have to interact with it each time you want to change the play order or play the other side. You have a 12" square piece of art to gaze at while listening.
The CD is uniformly shiny, has no visible grooves, bands, tracks. It gets placed in a tray then vanishes. We can't see it play, can't see the laser reading the pits, and only have to press a button on the remote to pick our tracks out. We're distanced from the playback mechanism. And the Jewel Box is small, the art is the size of a large postcard, and it's just not as physically involving.
Enter the digital file played back from a computer or device, and we're removed physically even farther. Nothing to handle at all, nothing to read, no visible art (ok, we can do album art on our 80" projection screen, but most of us don't).
The total experience of each medium cannot be separated from the perceived sound quality without deliberate and controlled double-blind testing measures. Humans just don't work that way.
To all of that, add the sonic differences because of entry unrelated production paths and personnel isolated in time if not space, and you don't have anything meaningful to compare. You might assume they would all be the same, but nothing could be further from the truth, at least in the lion's share of recordings. Quite simply, they are entirely different works of art.
Please understand, most of that difference you hear has nothing whatever to do with the fact that your'e listening to vinyl or bits. We could detail the tech differences, and how technically inferior the vinyl process is (yes, sorry, there are WAY too many problems with it), but what's the point? What I will say, and I think I've posted this before…here…somewhere…that I can't seem to find… if you actually feed identical source material to both vinyl and CD you end up with identical results except for the noise floor and wear issues… so long as you're very careful and don't tax the vinyl too hard, and you make darn sure your vinyl playback system is dead-nuts-on calibrated. I've done it…twice…the results surprised even me.
Since I've rambled, allow me to finish with this anecdote (again, could swear I've typed this out before). I was in a vinyl-only record shop in a small coastal California town. It was run by a very young couple, both in their 20s. I walked around and browsed their mostly used stock, saw lots of familiar jackets, and had my own private introspective time, right up until I couldn't stand to listen to their background music any more. It was vinyl, of course, they were militant vinylites. But the stylus was worn to a nub, the record grooves sounded like they'd been played, unkindly, at least 1000 times, the distortion, wear, mistracking and noise was simply unbearable, though I knew and loved the music. I simply couldn't stand it anymore, so I asked if the young man liked the sound quality he was playing. He said something like, "Yeah, nothing rocks like vinyl". I then ran down the list of what was wrong, more to help him than to criticize, but he blanched and became defensive. I even told him his stylus was ruining what was left of his precious vinyl. I had to leave, but not before I felt obligated to inform him that this kind of sound quality is exactly why we have CDs in the first place.
Now, don't think I'm a vinyl hater, I have a huge collection, and I do play the stuff. It's just that after five decades trying to get the last ounce of quality out of vinyl, cleaning, calibrating, tweaking, when the CD arrived I stopped worrying about all that and enjoyed the music without the artifacts. Because for me, distortion, noise, speed errors, ticks and pops…all of that gets between me and the suspension of disbelief. That's not saying I prefer a bad CD to a good record, but if we are going to compare apples and apples, digital apples wins for me.
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