As to Vinyl, the LP12 Akurate extracts the best from vinyl, but it has become clear that some of my older LPs are "played out" and although sounding better than early CDs are not as good as re-mixed streamed versions. But I still buy vinyl... I will not be buying any more CDs!
I wonder about this. Music or indeed speech recorded direct from the mic and compressed losslessly is technically much nearer the true sound, so I guess when you say you prefer vinyl you are saying you prefer the distortions produced by pressing plastic and replaying using a vibrating stylus. Perfectly reasonable thing to do - personal taste matters hugely in music.
What is the true sound though? A recording studio is a musically "sterile" environment, nothing ever sounds good IMHO because it's not what our ears expect to hear! It's great for the engineers though, they can separate instruments and have minimal distortion. The "distortion" is added later artificially. I've recorded in a studio around 40 or 50 times and have seldom enjoyed the sound achieved during or after the recording because it never sounds as good as it does in a live, accoustic situation. It can only ever be a representation of your music played in an unnatural environment.
Wherever we listen to live or recorded music there will always be an external source influencing the sound, unless of course you live in a recording studio! So as I see (or hear) it having a pure sound is useful to nobody apart from the recording engineer. Therefore the best hi-fi system for me is the one that most accurately recreates the sound and feeling I get in an accoustic situation.
