New take on CD vs Vinyl vs CD

I digitized some lps a decade or so ago, and man it was a lot of work.  The particular recordings used were available digitally and my results couldn’t touch the well done digital versions 

mahler123 hits the nail on the head. And when a rip is done right it will definitely sound better than playing the vinyl. I have about 400 rips and the sound quality is stunning, even in my car on the way to work or running at the gym. Each one took weeks of work. As jDougs says, it's just fun.

Of course the end game is that if your true destiny is the best sound quality possible, then this discussion is a waste of time. Today's HD releases (remasterrs, re-releases, new HD releases) are by far superior to anything you can ever reproduce from vinyl. Just from a frequency response standpoint, case and point: listen to Elton John's 1971 (November I think) Madman Across the Water analog masters straight to digital, in HD FLAC, don't even need the DSD format version for this....now listen to that and we're done here. The vinyl rip is great, but nowhere near as full and rich sounding as this exact copy of the analog masters. 

I enjoy gear and its fun, but I'm audiophile to hear the music I enjoy hearing it in the best possible way, with no budget limitations (from a realistic standpoint). Not listen to music to hear my various gear and convince myself what is best. Great music lifts my day, my evenings, my mood. A little Grateful Dead / Jerry Garcia at "11" and my day is off to a great start.   

Have fun!

Note to self: Don’t ever try to digitize records unless you’re a professional. 

I use a Sugarcube SC2 made by a company called Sweet Vinyl. It records in a number of formats including 24bit flac, does track breaks, and uses Discogs to lookup and match the record you’re recording. It is super easy. It also removes ticks and pops from the recording-- in the digital domain-- flawlessly.

I feed it from one or the other of two turntables; a MoFi Ultradeck with a MasterTracker cartridge or a SOTA Star Sapphire VI with Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge, both into a ’VINYL’ phono preamp from Musical Fidelity. I audition them on a 4 piece set - Genesis III’s + Genesis Servo-12 subs. My vinyl recordings tend to sound much better whenever I’ve compared them to an all digital version like, say, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories-- a very fine recording. No doubt on paper the specifications for vinyl don’t compare to digital specs, but, like others here have said, the ears like what they like.