A lot of great explanations of sound quality here but I think Petter came closest to saying whats on my mind about the bitrate of digital recordings. The important thing that makes analog sound so singular is: No matter how good a digital recording gets or how infinitely high the bitrate/file size it'll never match the buttery smooth warmth of tone qualities and frequency response of keeping the signal analog. When something was recorded in an analog studio to tape and reproduced on a vinyl through a tube amp you lose none of the sound quality. The sine wave of sound frequency is a smooth oscillating curve just the way you would have heard it live, no gaps for your ears to fill in.

When something is recorded digitally the sample rate is creating a version of that waveform by cutting a path through graph paper, with little stairsteps in it instead of being a smooth curved line. Then when you reproduce it digitally and play it from a phone or computer through headphones you're overcompressing it every step of the way to trick the ear into hearing that wave as a smooth pattern rather than a jagged one. But it does subconsciously fatigue the ear and brain from compensating for those blindspots compared to how a vinyl record sounds. Expensive tube amps sound great but vinyl still sounds 8x better than digital sound if I play them both through my solid state PA system.

Any digital recording is always an approximation, because it works by slicing up the sound into tiny samples and then stringing them together for playback. The greater the sampling rate, the higher the quality, but if the rate is too high, then the sound files are extremely large, Hence there is always a compromise between quality and file size. Systems like Mpeg try to compress file sizes by using an algorithm to chop out bits beyond the normal range of hearing, but that also means that harmonics suffer and the sound is not as rich as a purely analogue recording. The problem with analogue, of course, is that it requires a very steady rotation to avoid wow and flutter. Also, if the recording medium is too hard, such as in the old 78 rpm discs, you can hear the needle scratching. Vinyl reduced this scratching sound greatly, but there is still a "signal to noise" ratio to consider. That is where better vinyls and better needles play an essential part.
For me, I'm pretty old and my hearing is no longer acute. An MP4 is sufficient, but I do remember in my youth being sharply critical of what I heard!

For the most part,using tube amplifiers,they say,produces a richer sound vs. the solid state amps. Notice the "revival"of the tubed amps,some are $$$$ in price.

Arthur C. Clarke had an excellent documentary about ghost and he had explained how that technology of the spinning recordable disk record not only the intended sound they capture the entire environment.