Do they? Many have CD (all kinds) collections and stream too. Many consider the CD to be the best consumer format for reproduction of all music or, at least particular kinds where the dust in an LP track becomes an issue, etc.

… i dont prefer vinyl i guess im no longer an audiophile :(. In all seriousness my favourite format is CD, but i think certain albums sound “right” on certain formats. Some albums to me sound correct on casette, some vinyl etc etc. In all fairness i dont hear the “warmth” of vinyl so theres that too

I think it’s more about the ritual of it all and the feeling of music as a deliberate experience instead of just something to have on in the background. The audio quality is usually great, to me, but I like the idea of actually owning my favorite albums, even though I also stream tons.

It’s nice to get some of that warmth from Vinyls, which can often be what people like to listen to over and above the highest quality versions of said tracks. I’ve come across many audiophiles that would argue Vinyl captures the nuances of recordings more faithfully, hence the a warmer and more natural sound. On the other hand I’ve come across many audiophiles that argue higher quality versions of the songs produce better, clearer results.

Personally I think it can depend on where & when people generally listen to music. I love the process of getting a record out, setting up the player and siting down to have a listen. It think it can feel like a therapeutic process that somehow makes you actively listen to the music more closely, rather than doing other things whilst listening…

I completely agree with what some people said here already. Vinyl records shouldn’t sound this good given that it’s a relatively old technology. I recently got new speakers and amp on my set up and played MJ Thriller from MoFi and I was absolutely blown away by the sound. It’s pressed on super vinyl so it’s as quiet as you can imagine and it sounds so freakin good! I also found a sealed MFSL copy of Breakfast in America and although it’s 30+ years old there’s no pops, absolutely dead quiet and sounds like it fell from heaven! So I guess it’s very subjective and some records sound betted on vinyl and others don’t. I like mechanical things so there’s also that aspect. I got trapped in the cassette rabbit hole recently and it’s also very addictive though very different from vinyl but you still keep the mechanical feel!

I like the material aspect to it.

Especially with my kids to teach them that not everything is on a computer/smartphone

I also find the music to be more warm/full than the digital version

if the goal of an audiophile is to get the highest quality reproduction of a recording

It’s not.

The goal of the audiophile is to find a sound that pleases them the most, and have fun or really nice equipment that also pleases them to the level they can afford.

Vinyl has superior frequency response to CD. Also a digital wave can never equal an analog sound wave. Plus there is something nice about taking more time enjoying cueing up a record rather than skipping tracks and what not that happens digitally. About the only better thing with digital is ease of use and lower wow and flutter.

“Audiophiles” don’t. Posers and hipsters do.

Others have had great responses. Just to add, I’m into digital media and I don’t like objectively high fidelity sound. I like tube amps and nearly hundred year old speaker making technology.

All romatisicm aside, yes you are right. FLAC & CD are better than vinyl from a technical standpoint.

The reason that I sometimes prefer vinyl is the different mastering. Take the beatles white album for example. It’s been released on many different froms, like the original 1968 UK Vinyl, the 1978 remaster that was pressed on white vinyl (my favorite), the MFSL remaster from the 80’s (too much treble boost in the EQ for my tastes), plus dozens of other versions pressed on vinyl before we get to the two CD remasters and finally the 50th anniversary remaster.

Every one of these will sound a different, and sometimes the differences in the mastering will be more beneficial to the sound quality than the technical advances of CD/FLAC.

I’ve been digital since the 80’s. I got my first CD player Christmas of ‘85. For me personally, I could never get past the scratches and pops on records. In addition, I only owned about 10 LPs so when starting my music collection it really began with CD’s. What’s really weird is some of those 80’s CDs I still have because the remasters over the years sounded worse. Mind you, this applies only to about 10% of them as 90% of the time the remasters over the years sound better. Digital back then was inferior to the sound on an LP but didn’t have the scratches and pops and was more dynamic (my record player back then was not the best however). Anyway, I guess I’m saying I went the digital path over the years as that was the media I owned. I will say digital (to me) really got “great” with SACD, DVDA, Blu Ray - basically with 24/96 and 24/192 masters. I prefer the physical media over streaming as well as I hate “renting” music (and movies too!). I made a huge mistake years ago ripping all my CD’s on a hard drive and selling my CD’s. 3 iTunes crashes later and transferring everything to yet another external hard drive (and hoping it won’t crash) I have found myself buying back a lot of music, mostly at garage sales for .50 a CD. Anyway, I have heard great vinyl rigs (still had the issues I described - even after the nitty gritty record cleaning before putting it on the turntable! This said, whatever format gets you into the music is the way to go.

I wouldn’t say we prefer records though a lot do and I really love records with an excellent playback rig. And, throughout this long answer, when I say “record” I’m referring to those produced from purely analog sources, not digital recordings mastered and produced onto a record like the MoFi records in the scandal. I bought a few of these and, inexplicably at the time, I never liked them. About a year before that scandal broke, I sold them all for more than I paid because I preferred my OG copies even though they were noisier.

If a title is digitally mastered, I always want a digital copy at the native sample rate of the master and not one of the phony upsampled copies that are available.

FYI, this reply is going to bring out some hate from people who can’t hear the improvement in anything different in CD. But, I can’t avoid what makes them apoplectic to answer your question.

I, and many who prefer good analog, find the sound to be more realistic than digital and it can stir emotion more readily. Analog playback frequently elicits a visceral response, like tor tapping, to music that isn’t there with a CD. Digital can be really good but until it gets to DSD or PCM at 88.2/24 and above, it sounds more like a “slightly blurry” facsimile than a live performance.

An excellently mastered recording that is properly equalized and pressed has more potential to sound realistic than anything digital. The only errors in reproduction are the quality of the equipment that etched the vinyl master and the equipment that plays it back. The electrical signal that excellent playback equipment creates is a perfect analog of the signal that drove the etching equipment.

Digital playback at CD resolution has always fatigued me and it took me years to figure out why. From the very first time I heard a CD at a very high end store on an excellent system, I found the sound bright, phony and irritating. I listen to lots of rock music and whenever there are multiple, simultaneous, cymbals, the sound from a CD sounds like a leaky high pressure air hose. From a CD one cannot distinguish tan individual cymbal’s tone or even to hear how many.

Similarly with passages with many different, simultaneous, sounds it’s not possible to follow an accurately reproduced, individual in the cacophony. Even when its just a single acoustic guitar and a singer, there is a false “edge” of noise to the sound of each. When I play a clean record of the same master, it’s more like the artist is playing the song in the listening room. It’s very subtle, but it’s more engaging.

I used to think that the edge and brightness were at frequencies not even audible from a record played on my system. I thought perhaps that high frequency noise is in the analog recording and the attenuation from a record on my system was a good thing because it wasn’t audible.

But now, I think most of the unpleasant brightness and edge are digital artifacts from quantization error manifested at very high frequencies. I came to this conclusion from listening to the same master recordings at higher sampling frequencies. PCM at 96k and even moreso at 192k has much less of this noise and I can follow a single instrument through a crowded passage of many instruments that isn’t a cacophony. Individual cymbals are distinguishable and one can even hear the different tones of each.

All that being said about digital, if I put on the record of the same music, it all sounds more realistic. I don’t have a cartridge, turntable, tonearm and phono preamp that wrings every last detail out of a record, but its not ever a noisy cacophony like a CD. At my local high end store, that record is unbelievably realistic so I hope to get better equipment.

At home, the convenience of digital and the limitations of my record playback equipment make records and 192/24 digital playback a toss up. The records aren’t free of pops and clicks and a little more hiss so the 192/24 digital is quieter. And, most of the cymbal detail is present without much noise from the digital playback that is attenuated from records.

That is a very long answer of why I prefer records most of the time for critical listening but it is, by no means a universal opinion.

This answer will bring out the damaged individuals who are personally offended by my enjoyment of analog and high sampling rates because they can’t hear the difference. They will cite some pseudoscience that misapplies the Shannon-Nyquist theorem to “prove” I’m a gullible idiot because there isn’t a difference. I won’t answer these replies because it will hijack your OP. You’re asking why we like records, not to prove the science. There’s more to the sound quality than only what sampling rate is sufficient to accurately reproduce a single tone.

Listen to a pure analog record at a high end store and see what you think compared to a CD.

It’s about the experience of playing an album, and truly listening to it. I absolutely love it, plus record shops are a blast. Adventure every time

It normally has noticeably better imaging from my experience, I had to build a player by myself to match it (I don’t know if there already were players that do that, I didn’t find any and so many people I know)