The only additional data that (some) vinyl has over CDs is inaudible ultrasound. Ultrasound is intentionally omitted from CDs because they're intended for humans to listen to. In all audible aspects a correctly mastered CD release is closer to the original sound than any vinyl. And if you really want ultrasound (perhaps your dog enjoys it), you can get digital releases at higher sample rates.
It's not really about the data on the vinyl, and not really about sounding closer to the original. The vinyl flavor comes from the equipment. It's an analog device interacting with the real world, so the process of getting the sound from the vinyl to the speakers introduces a different sound. And some music sounds more pleasing with that process. Could you achieve something similar by using the digital release and running it through a filter? Probably.
But it definitely does impart a sound difference.
Since CDs are digital sound, there's not really the same reason reason to use CDs over a digital release.
edit: fwiw, I don't agree with the parent talking about more data, either. Since pretty much all the music these days is digital pretty much right through the entire recording process, I don't think this is all that relevant. I guess maybe sometimes they might use a different master for vinyl though? But regardless; if you're looking for "more data", you're not going to use either a CD or a vinyl.
Much of the vinyl noise and distortion is pressed into the vinyl itself. Even if you play it using an optical player it will still sound worse than a good CD.
My point was more that vinyl has a distinct sound, whereas CDs are just the digital files in a physical package. So if someone decides that distortion suits a particular album better, it's not going to "sound worse" to them.
And some do. But music listening is a personal experience, and sometimes the preference of the artists doesn't match that of the listener. Should an artist also prescribe the correct speakers/headphones to listen to their album?
Saying that vinyl doesn't have a distinct sound is a pretty wild take. It's pretty obvious if you've ever listened to vinyl and switched to a lossless version on the same setup. But here's some reading, nonetheless:
CDs have no distinct sound. CD quality (assuming correct dithering) is transparent to human hearing. You could play a vinyl record into a good ADC, dither it to 16 bits, then burn it to CD-R. It will sound 100% identical to the original vinyl in a blind test. The only way to tell the difference is that the vinyl continues to degrade with each playback, while the CD-R will last decades if stored correctly (pressed CDs last even longer).
Phonograph records tend to top out around 20,000 Hz. It's limited by groove and stylus size. CDs top out around 21KHz.
There's some audiophile content on Blu-Ray disks encoded at 24-bit/192 kHz, intended for people who subscribe to The Absolute Sound.[1]
(Typical TAS review: "Their Crystal Cable Infinity power cords markedly lower background noise; increase resolution, density of tone color, and dynamic contrast; and add a more substantial third dimension to images." US$34,000 for a 2 meter AC power cable.)
And vinyl has no sub bass, unlike digital formats. They would run it through a high-pass filter (disturbingly close to where the fundamental frequency of a kick drum is) in the mastering process, because record player needless jump from low frequency energy.
People used to say human eyes can't perceive >60fps.
It's also just CDs, not digital formats in general. Grab an audiophile and ask their opinions about digital PDM/PCM formats, high bitrate AACs even, against true vinyls. They wouldn't have as much opinions as they do against CDs.
Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves(and not even classic Yamaha FM sound chip signals).
But in the case of analog recording, nobody can distinguish a pure analog recording from the same thing but with a good ADC/DAC pair in the signal path in a blind test. It's theoretically possible to hear undithered 16 bit quantization noise if you turn the volume up extremely loud, but correctly mastered CDs should be dithered from higher bit depth.
And 44.1kHz sampling rate can theoretically represent arbitrary waveforms up to 22050Hz. The only complication is that this requires a brickwall filter, which is impossible to implement. That's why the sampling rate is set higher than needed to exceed the 20kHz limit of human hearing (in practice the limit for adult hearing is almost always lower). The higher sample rate allows for a practical filter with a shallower transition band to be used.
No, because a reconstruction filter is used to remove the stairsteps. This does not lose any information. I recommend watching the xiph.org videos explaining it:
EDIT: Also, consider that true square/triangle/sawtooth waves are mathematical abstractions that can't exist in reality. If you try to move a real loudspeaker cone in a square wave, you have to reverse direction in exactly zero time. This requires infinite acceleration and therefore infinite force. If you take the Fourier transform of these waveforms you get an infinite series of harmonics.
A real-world "square" wave only contains the lower harmonics within some frequency band. When you limit it to audio frequencies, all square waves above 6.67kHz are identical to sine waves because the only harmonic within that frequency band is the fundamental.
