Is analog & vinyl anoying? Is it worht it.

I have not heard the latest crop of CD players to make any meaningful comparison, but when I'm told that a dcs stack, or the Zanden combo is SOTA comparable to vinyl replay, at even higher prices than a great TT, I'm not sure that CD is viable. Convenient? Yes. I don't use a TT in my car. But, for my serious system, I want to extract the most music I can, guided by my preferences.
Part of that is, of course, the nostalgic fascination with vinyl, the packaging, the vintage pressings, the variations in same, and the whole ritual of preparing for playback.
The 'tweaking' (and I am currently using an arm that some might consider pretty demanding in that department) is no greater than what i would expect you would have to do for other parts of a great system- paying attention, occasionally checking stuff (like tubes, connectors, etc.) and keeping it clean.
I have over 8,000 LPs at this point. Not all of them are great, but if I stopped buying them today, I still couldn't listen to all this music in a life time. I guess I am committed. (Storage space is probably the biggest drawback to the format, not the cost or tweaking, in my estimation).
Oh, yeah, and I kinda like how my current TT looks. Don't you?

I agree that a comparison with live music is a humbling experience for those of us who take pride in our system's ability to reproduce music with lifelike qualities. What always gets me is the sheer explosiveness of the kickdrum at my local club, even when the band is just warming up. I don't know of any system that recreates this effectively- it is not just a question of 'loud,' or 'dynamic' or 'deep' but all of them, and more. This, at least, has been my experience in a relatively small venue, listening to bands of 4-5 pieces. (Saw James Hunter there Sunday night, terrific show).
Classical and larger staged stuff- greater distance, the system seems very capable on massed strings, tympani, horn parts, etc. In fact, it is probably 'better' than real, a hi-fi attribute to make up for others that are missing.
Is the vinyl thing like tubes in that both produce euphonic distortions pleasing to the ear? Or a lack of processing? Most vinyl records made in multitrack studios have progressively more processing added in later years- most of the later Beatles recordings are not very good, IMO, for this reason. The early, primitive recordings, and the audiophile ones that deliberately eschew fancy processing- are often terrific sounding, although the repetoire may be limited unless you have tons of used records and/or don't listen to much new stuff.
As to musicians being the arbiters of a natural sounding system- I don't think so. I think they listen for something beyond, and totally beside, the sound quality. I too can enjoy music, for music's sake, on a small radio, a cheap car hi-fi, over the Internet or via a plastic boombox. But, when I want to really dig in, I like to fire up a serious playback system. If I were starting from scratch, perhaps digital would make sense. But, I'm not. And, it is amazing what you can pull from those musty old grooves. The best analogy I could come up with is a sort of 'purer' (or 'more involving,'-- you supply the adjective, I'm trying to avoid saying 'better'-- just more 'straightforward' perhaps) experience, in the same way that someone else here, in a different thread, remarked on what driving a 73 RS is like, compared to a modern Porsche. The later car is no doubt the better one for almost all purposes, but there is a good reason why the 73 model is so desirable. I surely wouldn't go so far as to make judgements about who is more serious teh music listener based on the equipment or format- by that standard, the one which points to the musician, we'd all be looking for the equivalent of a compact mini-stack.

Dan_ed posed the question: How is this thread different that every other vinyl vs. cd thread over the last decade and what new insights have we learned?

Perhaps that the range of choices available to those interested in vinyl as a source have never been wider, or more interesting, and that the price of entry can be reasonable, despite the high cost of true SOTA vinyl playback; that there is a new generation of listener for whom vinyl is intriguing, and that even some old dogs can learn new tricks. (Maybe the last is over-optimistic, but I couldn't resist).
For me, playing the system is an event. I hope everyone has that pleasure.