ian,

i did answer your question. to me i don;t care which answer is given as the part that contains meaningful content is the same in both answers. if someone said my cd player sounded analog my immediate thoughts are warm, mushy, valves, snap, crackle, pop.. in a stream of conciousness way that is even though i know intellectually that vinyl and valves do not have to sound like that.

as for what i like about cd.. well..

convenience wise it is a hands down winner, although i don;t think anyone desputes that. cd's are more rugged, more tolerant of dirt, easier to use and are more convenient for using in different places (on the tube, in a car etc).

sound wise i'd say that bass and mid are more reliably integrated with cd than with vinyl and that although vinyls treble seems smoother than cd's, cd's is by no means offensive. i find that they have a more stable image, if you care about that. Prat and bass impact are spot on too. even reasonably mediocre recordings of a good piece of music will communicate and get you going in whatever way you get going.

recording quality of cd vs vinyl well i'd say that there were some dark days in the 80's but i've not bought a badly recorded modern cd for a while now although i'd agree with those that say that some recording era's sound better on vinyl than on cd but then i'd argue that vinyl is about 80 (?) years old whereas cd's are one quater that and some 40's and 50's vinyl was truely bad too.

of course all of the above is a horrible generalisation based on the cd and vinyl systems i've heard.

cheers

julian