A record has the analog waveform pressed into its tracks. It is analog and with good equipment can produce overtones up into the 100s of thousand hertz. Its the missing overtones that make digital a bit barren. You can't hear them, but their lack of influence on the frequencies you can hear, is audible.
Good digital played right from an SSD, or even better a RAM Disk, can be magical as well. It needs a big word and high sample rate though, as it is samples, not an analog waveform, so we need all the information we can get. DSD in its way, produces a crap ton of samples as well, and its the large number of samples that make digital really good. We won't get the overtones but we can have more detail.
Really a good DAC can produce most of what we need from a Red Book CD, and some of those are quite wonderful as well. One must keep in mind that production values have a great deal to do with this as well.
Good digital played right from an SSD, or even better a RAM Disk, can be magical as well. It needs a big word and high sample rate though, as it is samples, not an analog waveform, so we need all the information we can get. DSD in its way, produces a crap ton of samples as well, and its the large number of samples that make digital really good. We won't get the overtones but we can have more detail.
Really a good DAC can produce most of what we need from a Red Book CD, and some of those are quite wonderful as well. One must keep in mind that production values have a great deal to do with this as well.