First post ever here so I thought I'd jump into the deep end. To preface my comment, I'm a music-lover who likes quality audio equipment with limited tinkering. I'm not swapping out gear on a regular basis or cycling through various speaker setups, I have a mid-fi setup because that's what I can afford. I've cycled back and forth over the years w/ vinyl, reel-to-reel, CDs, HD digital, and streaming.
One can run numbers all day about frequency response and bitrates, etc. and they're still numbers. At the end of the day though, for me it's about how the music sounds when I'm listening. Casual listening/background listening? Streaming is fine. I can "live" with the audio quality while I'm doing chores around the house. When I'm sitting down in the evening when the house is quiet, and I want to listen to particular albums I listen to the best available recording I have. That might be a CD or vinyl or HD digital download or HD streaming.
People will go to the mat defending the warmth and audio purity of vinyl over digital but for my listening purposes it really is dependent upon when the master recording was made (pre-digital mastering) and what format the master recording was in (tape / digital). For example, my original copy of Beggars Banquet sounds like the late 60s piece of vinyl that it is. It's a "grungy" blues-rock album that sounds better on vinyl as it relates to warmth and the organic noise that is inherent to vinyl while the digital copy sounds a little too clean.
Conversely, a new ambient / electronic album mastered digitally will sound great on CD / Streaming and marginally different on vinyl where the inherent flaws of vinyl imprint themselves on playback It's a different listening experience but in that respect, the vinyl isn't necessarily superior to the digital playback.
And sometimes, digital /streaming sounds way better than the vinyl version. I had this happen on the new Calexico release. The vinyl doesn't sound nearly as good as the digital copy. It's too muddy. And that's an album with intentional "grit" in the recording to sound more vintage. The new vinyl pressing buries some instrumentation.
I think if you're evaluating which recording format sounds "better" is very much subjective to your listening situation at that point in time and I also like to keep in mind that there's a lot of music out there that was intended to be played over the radio, loudly at concerts and on cheap consumer turntables, not overly analyzed for instrument separation and soundstage.
