[igneo676]

Supposedly, one of the big reasons people prefer vinyl is not because of the medium. It's because of the mastering process.

CDs and/or Streaming services are victims of the "loudness" wars, resulting in music with low dynamic range. Since vinyl is often mastered by someone who specializes in the vinyl and is rather niche, they have full freedom to make it sound as good as it ever will be.

That's also one reason why some people prefer Tidal or <insert HiFi music services of your choice> because sometimes they simply use better masters. At least, that's the only reason that can't be chalked up to placebo

[NathanielK]

A really weird side effect of this is that there are "objective" tools for comparing the dynamic range of different releases.[1] Vinyl releases will consistently measure much better and have "nicer" looking waveforms, even if they were mastered identically.[2]

[1] http://dr.loudness-war.info/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AE9dL5FG8

[ddingus]

That is a big reason for me. It is not about better as much as it is a familiar set of tradeoffs and production values.