Which is so funny because when music is produced digitally (99% of the recordings in the past decade) a CD can be a bit-perfect copy of the original mastering.

A vinyl record is a stamp of a stamp of a stamp of a scraping of the original master. Better than a CD? Evidence of complete mental breakdown, more like.

This always makes me wonder whether there isn't something about the imperfections from these analog copies (not to mention various analog playback mechanisms) that 'adds' to the richness/perceived value of the music... Perhaps on some level some percentage of us prefer to know that we have a copy of a copy, or some level of imperfection, in our version that we play, vs a straight up 100% clone

That's completely fine.

What I object to is the unqualified use of 'better'. You can't claim that vinyl is somehow 'better' when what you mean is that vinyl is perhaps more 'satisfying' on a personal level.

I personally disagree; vinyl's imperfections irritate me just as much as a low bitrate MP3 does.

To me vinyl's upsides are the large cover artwork, and the lack of an easy 'skip' button. Less exiting is the knowledge that every subsequent play will sound worse than the last, even if by a tiny bit.

i agree with you about unqualified use of better - I think it applies to lots of areas of technology, and even areas of culture, etc... It would be nice if people were more understanding that a person's opinion on something is in fact influenced by all of their various value judgements and an enormous level of subjectivity; of course given that people in similar networks will have similar experiences and likely hold similar value judgements this leads to the tendency to 'circle jerk' on an issue, and then something becomes 'better'.. The first time they meet someone who doesn't share these judgements a flame war errupts