Has anyone been able to define well or measure differences between vinyl and digital?

We all know where this thread is going, not going to be pretty.

@johnread57 Your post makes the first judgement by stating "vinyl sounds more open, airy and transparent in mid range", and "cd's and most digital sounds quieter and yet lifeless than compared to vinyl".

You do mention, YMMV which is an objective non-judgemental statement. My digital sounds nothing like your description, quite the opposite. My vinyl also is wonderful, no judgements of one vs other for me.

Why always the battle between the two? Very similar need to argue as conservative vs liberal battles, too few willing to state or believe both are capable of entirely satisfying sound quality.

To answer OP question. Based on my fairly long term experience with streaming, I'd suggest jitter is most valuable measurement for digital. Jitter mostly impacts sound stage size, organization, stability and more importantly flow of music, much more natural flow,  I suspect we are far more sensitive to jitter than commonly assumed, even the most miniscule levels are perceived as sense of discomfort, aka digititus. Don't think there is comparable measurement for vinyl, wow and flutter likely closest?

I am experiencing the exact opposite of asctim in that as my digital, analog and total system becomes ever more resolving, transparent I become more relaxed as my mind DOESN'T have to work as hard to fill in the blanks. Certainly, one can feel there is excessive resolution if the added resolution exposes some anomaly that was previously hidden.

I'll go back again to what I surmise what may be the main bother with digital, and that is jitter. Perhaps precision is the better word to describe what many hear with their digital setups. I've experienced this sense of excess precision at various times in the evolution of my digital setup. I always have the ability to directly compare my digital to nice analog setup, and I have my aural memory of the best of the best vinyl setups. Easy to hear this extra helping of precision vs analog if it occurs. With the recent addition of my custom build streamer in which latency/jitter was minimized to perhaps SOTA, I am finally hearing digital that flows very similarly to vinyl. None of the over precision, analytical, nervous, digititus that is commonly assumed to be inherent to digital. As another poster above stated, I too am hearing greater convergence of analog and digital over time.

I don't hear any of the other liabilities mentioned above either, like micro or macro dynamic loss, all recording dependent on my setups. At this point I'd have to say the greatest variability between analog and digital is recording quality. I hear overly compressed crap with both formats.

It is interesting that so many didn't hear the digital step used on Mofi recordings. Perhaps it proves point digital and analog sound converging. ADC and DAC is continually improving, my digital setups have reflected this improvement over many  years.

Another consideration. Vinyl is a more mature format, top tier vinyl setups have existed my entire lifetime. Digital only became mass market in 1980's, we had to suffer pretty bad digital sound quality for many years. Both ADC and DAC equipment has gradually improved over the years, and our gear has reflected that. I'm assuming analog sound quality is the reference for best SQ for most, including audio equipment designers/engineers, therefore, it follows digital would reflect a convergence to analog over time.

You're going to have a hard time deriving objective generalizations about these two formats in relation to each other, the whole thread is subjective based and will continue down that path. No single person can hear every single permutation of digital or analog setups, without this knowledge they are only hearing the difference in individual setups. Certainly, those with experience of having listened to many analog and digital setups can arrive at more objective conclusions, still doesn't account for all variables.

I'm with Zappasan, enjoy the music. While this discussion may be fine exercise in logic, I'm happy to let it all go and  simply enjoy the music from my vinyl and streaming setups. No longer any need to analyze the differences.