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
I never get into these debates but here I go…
Records can really sound excellent. The problem is that it’s a far more technical and expensive medium to get it to sound excellent. There is just such a wide gulf of a difference in quality between a $1k turntable and a kilo buck turntable. It’s just not the same experience.
For the first 25 years of CDs, I never heard digital that sounded as good as a really good turntable. That’s not true anymore. So times are changing. Still, a good turntable is better than a cheap DAC but a cheap DAC is probably as good or better than the cheap turntables that are selling like hotcakes these days. You guys basing your whole opinion of vinyl sound on your Rega, or Technics really have not really experienced how good records can be, even 60 or 70 year old used records.