[Rocco DiPippo]

I own a recording studio so this stuff is of extreme interest to me. A few facts about the various media: Vinyl is attractive for several reasons - the ritual involved with playing a record, enjoying cover art and because of the tactile nature involved in the whole show. But factually speaking when you play a record you have to deal with distortions such as clicks, pops, scratches, "wow" and rolled off high end and low end and limited dynamic range. Plus, the closer the needle gets towards the end of the record, the worse things sound - a simple matter of physics and mechanics.

Records can and often do sound great but overall, I think CDs sound much better because they have none of those problems and they huge dynamic range.

How an album is mastered has a lot to do as far as how good, or bad, the final print is and that's regardless of the medium.

As far as streaming formats go 44.1khz 16 bit files (CD quality) ones sound great as do other "lossless" formats. But man, when you get to mp3 files, especially low res common types like 128kps, they sound ratty - I cringe when listening to them. Even high res mp3 files like those mastered to 320kbps have a "rattiness" to them compared to lossless formats.

[Roccus]

Aren’t some of the distortions you mentioned ameliorated with a linear tracking turntable?
I seem to remember that being the case when I purchased mine in the 80s, but my hearing is too far gone now to make an honest comparison.