I do remember Ella in a similar room. So, that would be a
vote for vinyl in terms of timbre.

Only because you'd not heard better in those days. ;-)

I wasn't speaking for myself exactly here, if you look at the context.
But, yes I had heard better - to my ears. I once had a system which had
stacked Quad 57s (fronts and backs off) with Decca ribbon tweeters,
McIntosh amp driven direct by a phono stage I hard wired to the arm,
which was Hadcock/Decca Gold in a Thorens 124. Speaking just of timbre
and nothing else, that was very good indeed, thanks mostly to the
speakers. But yes, I do think that reproduction has progressed and I
believe I'm getting better results from CD but only through quite a
sophisticated DAC (Chris Found V-DAC 4) - speaking once again of
timbre. It's my impression that a really stand-out instrumental timbre
is affected by the weakest link in the reproduction chain - could be
things like capacitors and output transformers. I can quite see that
digital reproduction can bring a really good signal through to one's
home reproduction system, and in the case of amps like the very
impressive Lyngdorf ones, pretty much to the speakers themselves. I
still have a preference for valves between DAC and speaker, but the
Lyngdorf is close in terms of timbre, and better than all but the best
valve gear.