Once you get into reproduction, your experience is determined by so many factors -- all of the technical factors the techies love to discuss, the kind of playback equipment you have, the room you are listening in or the headphones you are using, etc. -- that it is very difficult to make any generalizations. Also, it eventually comes down to personal aesthetic preferences. Granted that vinyl might have a "warmer" sound, or whatever, in general, some might prefer that sound and others might not. So I don't think there is really any point in trying to lay down general laws. All methods of reproduction are distortions and diminishments; we simply choose the ones we prefer.
I would say that it is too bad, in a way, that sound reproduction was ever invented, because in the nineteenth century, for example, many more people learned to play instruments and sing and thus had the pleasure of making music themselves. Today, a lot of people who might have discovered their musical abilities if they had lived then just plug iPod buds in their ears and accept what they hear as music.
(Of course, there is the advantage that one can hear much more music in a lifetime than before reproduction and broadcasting. I think of folks laboriously traveling from one town to another to hear a relative handful of works. But they did pretty darn well, even so! Perhaps increasing quantity is not necessarily an advantage.)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)