The ticks, pops and maintenance of vinyl are just not worth it. Have you heard the remastered Stones CD's? They sound terrific without any harshness. But my system is certainly not an audiophile one.
Why vinyl?
I understand the thoughts of a lot of you that digital is harsh and bright and has an edge. I know that analog has a warmer fuller sound, otherwise why would so many people put up with the inconvenience of records, cartridges, cleaners, tone-arm adjustments, etc. I used to be there. Of course all I had was a Garrard direct drive turntable. If the idea is to get as close as possible to the original source, why has not open-reel tape made a huge comeback. After all that's how most of the stuff was recorded in the first place. Very few were direct to disk recordings. Why would dragging a stylus through a groove be better than the original? There used to be a company out there called In-Synch that used the original masters and sold cassettes of them, dubbed at 1:1 ratio. I was the happiest person in the world when CD's came out and I could throw out my disk-washer and everything else that went with it, including the surface noise and the TICKS and POPS. Just something I've wondered about.