Noooo, definitely not "obviously" better if you're talking about sound quality. Not by a long shot. Vinyl is far superior. Every advancement that comes along in digital compression is an attempt to be as good as vinyl.
I agree that there are different opinions on what sound better to different people. I'm not 100% on vinyl's being superior though. It is different from listening to digital. I also love vinyls.
All in all when it comes down to it though, is that sounds really are just electromagnetic pulses within our brain. If we break down sound to it's truest form, then digital has been superior in the long shot. Technically speaking. Everything from bit depth ratios to frequencies, in digital we can edit it all. Analog is special, but when it comes to editing and pure sound, digital is top dog.
I think it's mostly because we're so accustomed to noise with our sound, especially since it can never really be fully removed, that and the nostalgia factor of vinyls. Just creates a certain atmosphere around it I think. To hear sounds genuinely being produced has physical attributes to it that add that extra something I think. Much like hearing orchestral instruments in person rather than through headphones. Being there in person, there are physical attributes that account to our overall hearing experience, where as technically we can reproduce and edit those same sounds perfectly as we can get, but that it'd still sound sterile without the instrument actually there. It's like we can add as much reverberation as we like, but it'll never really sound the same as a room with excellent acoustics.
I got carried away, sorry.
