And I agree fully, that is why i told you to compare apples with apples and stop dragging irrelevant stuff into it. I am discussing very specific issues with vinyl vs cd's. You sweep my specific arguments aside, drag in irrelevant stuff like headphones,
None of it is irrelevant, you're just upset that I'm bringing realistic variables into the mix that effect the real world results.
For example, you keep harping on about how:
Any modern chinese low-cost DAC reproduces an analog waveform from a 16 bit signal more accurately than vinyl. That's a very objective standard.
To quote an article that is extremely objective (going as far as saying that, of course logically, the noise floor for vinyl is high):
Vinyl is also a different medium to master for. For digital media — CDs and mp3s — there is an absolute ceiling of 0dB. Most modern recordings are mastered to reach this ceiling, often barely coming down from it (certainly in David Guetta’s case). Despite having much more dynamic range available to us, outside of classical and jazz, not many engineers use it (you may have heard of the ‘loudness wars’).
On vinyl, there is no absolute ceiling. The level is set by the cutting engineer. Rather than chopping off the highest peaks with the use of brickwall limiters, they are gently saturated — such is the nature of analogue. As record players aren’t portable, and don’t have a shuffle mode, it’s assumed that vinyl listeners don’t mind using their volume knob as much, so the need for the recording to be as loud as everything else is removed — allowing greater use of dynamic range. Bottom line, the source material is often actually better.
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2012/11/why-does-vinyl-sound-better-than-cd/
Again, we're discussing the ACTUAL SOUND that comes out of the medium. That's what we're talking about. You think you can make a hugely general statement about how 'DAC's produce an analog waveform more accurately than vinyl' without having anyone question you? Good grief.
You're saying that front end is arbitrary? And you think you're a big boy for thinking that you can explain the manufacturing process to me? How rude. You could at least point out that your reaction is incendiary.