...would only make sense if everything was recorded and processed analog from studio to press, and then immediately converted to digital on that first play (...

...would only make sense if everything was recorded and processed analog from studio to press, and then immediately converted to digital on that first play (...and then I'd also be hearing a lot of analog audio equipment, some like this, I hate it, clarity, cohesion and reproducibility float my boat). I'm not sure, but I'm guessing in modern recording techniques, it's pretty soon converted to a digital format, and from that point on, vinyl wouldn't make sense, as any analog conversion (and even worse, a following reconversion to digital) is tantamount with quality loss (if you still know photocopiers, it's like copying the copy, and then copying that copy, etc.. or in more modern terms, endlessly resaving a JPG picture, or something like that). At the risk of sounding polemic: There's a lot of ...sound from analog audio equipment on vinyl, that's non-existent on a digital format. It's quite ironic, humans abandoned analog formats in video, where that is a definite loss (DS9 and VOY, anyone?), since we can always add more pixel density in playback devices, but embrace it in audio, which is... well, at least in my opinion, a subjective loss, too, and unless we can consciously slow down time-perception, 44.1 kHz sampling will forever suffice.