Am I getting it all?

Agree with Ncarv...a very good analog front end should smoke even superb digital. I'll take my Linn LP12, Koetsu Black, and Ear 834 over the digital I've had in my house most any day (at least on classical)--and that includes the EMM CDSA, the Linn CD12, and the GNSC Wadia 860, all of which are about as good as digital gets. I used to use a passive pre years ago, and concluded, after some experimentation, that an active tube pre just sounded more musical. Don't really understand why, but, like Plato, think you may want to start there.

Islandmandan - You do raise an interesting point about vinyl--there does seem to be a wider range of sound among records than CDs. Funny that I don't recall that from record listening in the 80's. Thin, fat, muffled, bright...you never know. I don't doubt that my equipment is revealing more of the differences than 20+ years ago, but still, that's been a surprise to me as I get back into vinyl (and a sometimes unpleasant one).

I listen mostly to classical music, and have done a fair bit of A-B comparing, and find that in the areas of delicacy, warmth, and detail, Lps win out most of the time, but not always. [I did one or two posts about A-B'ing Miles Davis and some other things last fall that may be worth a look.] In the area of deep and punchy bass, or glistening treble, it really depends on the particular Lp/CD (in my experience). (Although I do think that Lps generally resolve the highs in a more natural-sounding fashion...particularly in classical music.)

The other area that matters to me a lot is listening fatigue. I tend to suffer from listening fatigue with CD's, unless I'm pretty careful what I choose. And that's with several of the more musical CD players out there. I almost never get fatigue listening to Lps.

Several of us have said "Lps smoke CDs." For me, for long term listening, I'd still say that, but you make a fair point that it's not always true, and it may make a difference depending on your listening tastes. FWIW.