Analog can be "better" (in one way) than digital for one good reason.
When those guys say the sound is richer with analog, there are
correct. It is not a matter of subjectivity, it is a technological
fact. Whether you can make the difference is another matter.
Digital encoding is trying to approximate a signal by a finite
quantity of numbers.
Basically the way to encode the music is to get only the most
significant frequencies and leave the remaining ones. If you want a
perfect description (encoding), you need the intensity of all the
frequencies, hence an infinite quanity of numbers. The more values you
keep, the more accurate your encoding is, but it takes more memory to
store.
Some people do think that analog sounds richer, and I don't see any
reason not to believe that they can make the difference.