Why do records made from digital sources sound good?

Having said this I recognize that it is possible to get excellent sound from analog. I believe that many listeners prefer to hear the colorations from their analog set up (usually related to cartridge choice)and the sense of ambiance from LP playback, and I think the OP is probably not one of them.

@mahler123 Cartridges affect the sound a lot less than you suggest in this post! The ability of the arm to properly track the cartridge has much more effect. The platter pad has a big effect too. The other thing that affects ’cartridge sound’ is the phono section. Many phono sections (oddly) don’t take into account the simple fact that the cartridge is an inductor, and when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance (the tonearm cable) you get an electrical resonance that can overload the input of many phono sections, resulting in colorations as well as ticks and pops.

Once that problem is solved (often with a more competently designed phono section) the cartridge choice is limited to what works with your arm. The big weakness of LP playback is setting things up correctly and not really the media (which has wider bandwidth than digital and much lower distortion that many digiphiles care to admit).

The advantage of the LP in today’s world is its less likely to be compressed; digital releases tend to be compressed since there is expectation it will be played in a car, on earbuds in a noisy environment, or over the radio. LPs might be played on the radio but not in the other two situations.

When I was running my LP mastering operation, if we got a digital source file I always requested a version that had no DSP except for normalization. I never ran into a project that actually needed compression.

So can someone explain this to me? 

@billstevenson Yes. FWIW, I ran an LP mastering operation for about 15 years.

When we got in a project that used a digital source file, we would talk to the producer to see if we could get a copy that didn't have all the DSP stuff that digital source files often have. In particular, most digital releases are compressed so they can be played on the radio, in a car or ear buds in a noisy environment.

LPs are likely not getting played in a car So they don't need the compression. So we would get a source file that didn't have it. LPs have a lot more dynamic range than most digifiles care to admit. It certainly makes the LP more interesting to listen to. We found that if we spent enough time with the project we could identify any problem areas (like out of phase bass, which can knock the stylus out of the groove) and see what we could do about them without resorting to extra processing (such as mono bass for out of phase bass). By doing this we never had to do any extra processing.

I know I'm not the only mastering engineer to figure this out. But usually the producer doesn't want to spend the cash for the engineering time, hence compression, limiting and mono bass processors. But an experienced mastering engineer usually can spot problem areas and deal with it in short order without using processing. In these days of most recordings being digital, I suspect getting a source file without DSP compression is a common practice.

On this account, LPs can often sound better than the digital releases, having nothing to do with LP or digital performance and everything to do with industry practice and the desire to make the digital release as accessible as possible.