i completely get preferring analog media, so if it’s about the sound characteristics (that ‘warmth’), having physical media, etc fair enough. but if the goal of an audiophile is to get the highest quality reproduction of a recording wouldn’t CDs or FLACs be your best bet?
maybe this only really applies for newer music, perhaps digital releases for music recorded analogue are just digitized vinyl or reel to reel recordings but for music produced in DAWs the highest quality version available for that release would surely be either a CD or a digital FLAC release
People have covered a lot of the non-sonic pleasures of vinyl already.
As for the sound: I have a good digital front end (music server, full res ripped CDs/Tidal streaming to Benchmark DAC2L), and a good vinyl front end (Transrotor Fat Bob S turntable/Acoustic Solid 12" arm/Benz Micro Ebony L cartridge) and I go back and forth between them all the time.
I love the sound of both sources. But if I had to choose I slightly prefer the sound of vinyl overall. It’s a generalization, but on my system, digital is subtly more clean and nuanced and of course free of any extraneous artifacts. But, to steal a description used by loudspeaker designer John Devore, vinyl just seems to paint “a more solid picture of the musical event.”
I think it’s due to the slight accrual of distortions in the process of creating records and scraping that music back off with a needle, but it seems to add a slight thickness and texture which to my ears makes the voices and instruments seem a bit more “solid” and texturally standing out from the mix, a bit more like hearing real sound.
It’s the kind of thing where two people could compare the sound and one would cue on what the digital does “better” and prefer it, and the other person like me cues in on certain characteristics of the vinyl presentation that might impress.
I totally get audiophiles who much prefer digital over vinyl - I was all digital since the 80’s until I got back in to vinyl several years ago. But I’ve never had so much fun with this hobby and with music listening as when I got back in to vinyl!