Vinyl can't carry much bass, so it's cut with a special EQ curve - called the RIAA curve - that eliminates most of the bass and some of the mids.
Phono preamps have the opposite curve. In theory when the music comes of the preamp you get a flat response overall. In reality any added distortion warms up the bass a lot, the mids some, and the treble barely at all.
Because what's left of the bass is still cut close to the dynamic range limits of vinyl, it's always distorted. But because of the extreme EQ this rounds out the low end and gives the mids a boost.
The overall effect is a warm sound.
Vinyl isn't a true hifi medium. It's more like an Instagram filter for music. It can sound very nice, but it's a heavily processed sound, not a realistic one.
Digital has other issues. But for ultimate fidelity, personally I would always - no exceptions - prefer to listen to a lossless 24-bit digital recording of a master tape captured with studio-grade converters and streamed from hard disk than from vinyl, CD, or any compressed file format.
Web distribution (iTunes/etc.) files come from running the CD master through an AAC/MP3/etc. converter which does data compression only. But a 256Kbps/16bit/44.1KHz AAC (like you'd get from iTunes) is a lot higher quality than vinyl.
Data compression doesn’t make much sense here, because you usually use uncompressed audiofiles anywhere unless it goes to the web.