It's still true that it takes a skillful ear/hand to do that mastering. I've heard terribly mastered older (not abused) records and modern releases that are excellent. A good original copy of Rumours is about as good as it gets IME.
Vinyl _does_ also provide a nice soft upper limit to the loudness wars.
Couldn't we characterize vinyl limitations and capture that as a digital filter? And if so would you be able to tell the difference between the vinyl and filtered digital?
It wouldn't work with albums where the mastering is different, especially if the digital release is compressed more. You cannot undo squashed dynamic range really. A famous example from a while ago is the album stadium arcadium by the red hot chili peppers. Comparing the two versions of a song should sound notably different even to a casual listener. And you can really see the difference just looking at the wave forms.
The premise in this part of the thread is that the mastering engineers will not make a record that exceeds the limits of the medium, and what fits on the medium sounds nice.
Assuming this is correct, and that the digital mix intended for cds or streaming/downloads outside vinyl's range, you might be able to filter the digital mix to fit in vinyl's range and that might approximate the vinyl mix, but maybe the mastering engineer would make different choices (of course, maybe they just use a filter). It'd be interesting to explore with actual data.
Vinyl _does_ also provide a nice soft upper limit to the loudness wars.