You can also bake analog sounding warmth into your hi-res digital master and it's done all the time. There are a wide variety of different digital mastering plug-ins which do remarkably sophisticated analog modeling.
Ultimately, this boils down to signal which vibrates speakers. As a thought experiment, if you use some kind of theoretically perfect surface-sampling laser to capture every movement of the speaker surface at sufficient frequency and fidelity to reproduce all of the information in the original signal and speaker surface vibrations (ala Shannon->Nyquist), then a digital playback of that signal which vibrates the same speaker surface identically will sound exactly the same.
Individuals can prefer different sonic characteristics encoded in an output but that's an aesthetic choice. The entire signal chain creating that output is the result of creative and technical choices. It goes from guitar string to studio acoustics to microphone to mixing board to outboard processing gear to recording medium to duplication to distribution to playback to amplifier to speakers to room acoustics to human ear. Most of those elements significantly color the sound. Yes, mistakes can be made in the downstream signal chain which diverge from the creative intent. However, those mistakes are exceptions, and not inevitable. Done correctly, there's no reason a digital step in the chain shouldn't be completely undetectable.
> Individuals can prefer different sonic characteristics encoded in an output but that's an aesthetic choice.
I find that listening to one of three different sources (earbuds, gaming headset which is EQ'd via open source software, and inexpensive-but-fancy headphones) causes me to adjust to that particular set of headphones' sound. It seems to be like the equivalent of our brain continuously auto-white-balancing our vision.
Absolutely, personal sonic character preferences can vary per content, listening context and the play back device (plus play back signal chain like DACs, pre-amps etc). And it's not just personal taste, most human's bio-based input 'hardware' varies enough to matter, especially for those of us who are out of warranty (ie >40 yrs old). There are even interactive apps which will give you a quick hearing self-test and build an EQ profile based on your individual response curves. I use one bundled into Android and it definitely improves my listening experience.
Ultimately, this boils down to signal which vibrates speakers. As a thought experiment, if you use some kind of theoretically perfect surface-sampling laser to capture every movement of the speaker surface at sufficient frequency and fidelity to reproduce all of the information in the original signal and speaker surface vibrations (ala Shannon->Nyquist), then a digital playback of that signal which vibrates the same speaker surface identically will sound exactly the same.
Individuals can prefer different sonic characteristics encoded in an output but that's an aesthetic choice. The entire signal chain creating that output is the result of creative and technical choices. It goes from guitar string to studio acoustics to microphone to mixing board to outboard processing gear to recording medium to duplication to distribution to playback to amplifier to speakers to room acoustics to human ear. Most of those elements significantly color the sound. Yes, mistakes can be made in the downstream signal chain which diverge from the creative intent. However, those mistakes are exceptions, and not inevitable. Done correctly, there's no reason a digital step in the chain shouldn't be completely undetectable.