The thing that fascinates me about vinyl as a playback medium is the sheer number of user-affected (if not precisely user-defined) variables that can have a profound effect on the reproduction. In digital, the user's "manipulation" of the signal is limited primarily to the selection of transport and DAC (and cables). With analog there's the turntable selection, tonearm selection, cartridge selection, phono preamp selection, cable selection, even cleaning methods. And then there's the setup of all that stuff - from cartridge loading to arm/cartridge geometry and compliance combinations, VTA, tracking force, anti-skate. All those stops along the way where the user can alter the playback quality, intentionally or not. It's a tinkerer's dream, and about as far from an open-the-box-and-play kind of experience imaginable, despite the fact that many of us of a certain age think of it as just the opposite (those who grew up with LP playback as second nature and who are befuddled by sampling rates, data transfer, network settings, clocks and jitter).
