I wouldn’t say we prefer records though a lot do and I really love records with an excellent playback rig. And, throughout this long answer, when I say “record” I’m referring to those produced from purely analog sources, not digital recordings mastered and produced onto a record like the MoFi records in the scandal. I bought a few of these and, inexplicably at the time, I never liked them. About a year before that scandal broke, I sold them all for more than I paid because I preferred my OG copies even though they were noisier.

If a title is digitally mastered, I always want a digital copy at the native sample rate of the master and not one of the phony upsampled copies that are available.

FYI, this reply is going to bring out some hate from people who can’t hear the improvement in anything different in CD. But, I can’t avoid what makes them apoplectic to answer your question.

I, and many who prefer good analog, find the sound to be more realistic than digital and it can stir emotion more readily. Analog playback frequently elicits a visceral response, like tor tapping, to music that isn’t there with a CD. Digital can be really good but until it gets to DSD or PCM at 88.2/24 and above, it sounds more like a “slightly blurry” facsimile than a live performance.

An excellently mastered recording that is properly equalized and pressed has more potential to sound realistic than anything digital. The only errors in reproduction are the quality of the equipment that etched the vinyl master and the equipment that plays it back. The electrical signal that excellent playback equipment creates is a perfect analog of the signal that drove the etching equipment.

Digital playback at CD resolution has always fatigued me and it took me years to figure out why. From the very first time I heard a CD at a very high end store on an excellent system, I found the sound bright, phony and irritating. I listen to lots of rock music and whenever there are multiple, simultaneous, cymbals, the sound from a CD sounds like a leaky high pressure air hose. From a CD one cannot distinguish tan individual cymbal’s tone or even to hear how many.

Similarly with passages with many different, simultaneous, sounds it’s not possible to follow an accurately reproduced, individual in the cacophony. Even when its just a single acoustic guitar and a singer, there is a false “edge” of noise to the sound of each. When I play a clean record of the same master, it’s more like the artist is playing the song in the listening room. It’s very subtle, but it’s more engaging.

I used to think that the edge and brightness were at frequencies not even audible from a record played on my system. I thought perhaps that high frequency noise is in the analog recording and the attenuation from a record on my system was a good thing because it wasn’t audible.

But now, I think most of the unpleasant brightness and edge are digital artifacts from quantization error manifested at very high frequencies. I came to this conclusion from listening to the same master recordings at higher sampling frequencies. PCM at 96k and even moreso at 192k has much less of this noise and I can follow a single instrument through a crowded passage of many instruments that isn’t a cacophony. Individual cymbals are distinguishable and one can even hear the different tones of each.

All that being said about digital, if I put on the record of the same music, it all sounds more realistic. I don’t have a cartridge, turntable, tonearm and phono preamp that wrings every last detail out of a record, but its not ever a noisy cacophony like a CD. At my local high end store, that record is unbelievably realistic so I hope to get better equipment.

At home, the convenience of digital and the limitations of my record playback equipment make records and 192/24 digital playback a toss up. The records aren’t free of pops and clicks and a little more hiss so the 192/24 digital is quieter. And, most of the cymbal detail is present without much noise from the digital playback that is attenuated from records.

That is a very long answer of why I prefer records most of the time for critical listening but it is, by no means a universal opinion.

This answer will bring out the damaged individuals who are personally offended by my enjoyment of analog and high sampling rates because they can’t hear the difference. They will cite some pseudoscience that misapplies the Shannon-Nyquist theorem to “prove” I’m a gullible idiot because there isn’t a difference. I won’t answer these replies because it will hijack your OP. You’re asking why we like records, not to prove the science. There’s more to the sound quality than only what sampling rate is sufficient to accurately reproduce a single tone.

Listen to a pure analog record at a high end store and see what you think compared to a CD.