Although, in general, I agree with your assesment that analog is preferable to digital "most" of the time, I don't find it so when the LPs suffer from so much compression as many classical releases do from the 60s through 70s. In many cases, comparing the CD with the same LP tips the balance towards the CD.
I do not know whether this is as prevalent with pop or rock releases since I don't own many but there are many pretty awful-sounding LPs from major classical companies. Not only in compression issues but also the use of bad vinyl. I just opened a sealed copy of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan on DGG and the sound is terrible. The compresison of frequencies is simple butchery in a work that requires large dynamic contrasts. The CD of this release is infinitely more listenable although you are still aware of some digital edginess. It seems that classical labels, like RCA Victor, started making extraordinary LPs in the late-50s and early 60s and then it all went downhill from there. In the late-70s and early 80s English companies like Chandos, Hyperion and others started putting out marvelous releases that, even today, sound great. But they were the exception and not the rule.
I am thankful that there is now a small trickle of re-releases being done by Classic Recordings and others of some of the great classical releases of old even though they are expensive. Here I can satisfactorily hear that a "great" LP can and does sound better than the same issue on CD.
I do own many LPs that have the benefit of both good production and manufacture and they do sound so much more musical and involving than CDs. But, I have realized that it all depends on individual items and I can no longer make a blanket statement that "LPs sound better than CDs."
I do not know whether this is as prevalent with pop or rock releases since I don't own many but there are many pretty awful-sounding LPs from major classical companies. Not only in compression issues but also the use of bad vinyl. I just opened a sealed copy of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan on DGG and the sound is terrible. The compresison of frequencies is simple butchery in a work that requires large dynamic contrasts. The CD of this release is infinitely more listenable although you are still aware of some digital edginess. It seems that classical labels, like RCA Victor, started making extraordinary LPs in the late-50s and early 60s and then it all went downhill from there. In the late-70s and early 80s English companies like Chandos, Hyperion and others started putting out marvelous releases that, even today, sound great. But they were the exception and not the rule.
I am thankful that there is now a small trickle of re-releases being done by Classic Recordings and others of some of the great classical releases of old even though they are expensive. Here I can satisfactorily hear that a "great" LP can and does sound better than the same issue on CD.
I do own many LPs that have the benefit of both good production and manufacture and they do sound so much more musical and involving than CDs. But, I have realized that it all depends on individual items and I can no longer make a blanket statement that "LPs sound better than CDs."