The opinions of any of us on here, myself, Greenears, Rrob, Bigshot, stv04 have no bearing on what the main consumer market will actually do, because that market cares about convenience, then price, then a tiny bit about quality. It is still an interesting discussion though :>)
A typical vinyl HiFi setup from say 1984 owned by someone like me in their mid twenties with a half reasonable job and an interest in music (but not a HiFi obsessive) would sound far better than a cheapish DAP from a couple of years ago playing 16/44 files. Everything else being equal, and using high quality recordings, which is very difficult to achieve and I am not suggesting you try.
It may or may not sound better than a top end modern DAP playing well recorded and mastered 24/192 files. Though I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 1984 vinyl setup up lost that competition.
You haven't quite got my point about deterioration in quality because you are probably a lot younger than me and don't remember all this.
It started with Vinyl pressing quality. It started to deteriorate in about 1973 and within 5 years the QC had gone completely.
Many more steps followed along the way in many areas, There were of course some improvements as well, but the general trend was always downwards.
Compression of loud music on CDs and Radio is just one of the more recent events, in a long chain of many events, which all have one thing in common. A reduction in quality at another point in the Audio chain.
I really do hope, and indeed believe, that has now stopped and is going to go rapidly into reverse over the next few years, and those of us with the time and the money will get the quality that we used to take for granted. In fact maybe considerably better quality than that. But it has taken a long time.
