Perhaps the best audio-based case for vinyl is actually precisely the fact that it
does mess up the original recording. A lot of vinyl fans talk about the "warmth" of records, particularly of the low-end. But, as Pitchfork's Mark Richardson
puts it, "the 'warmth' that many people associate with LPs can generally be described as a bass sound that is less accurate." The difficulty of accurately translating bass lines to vinyl without making grooves too big means that engineers have to do a lot of processing to get it to work, which changes the tone of the bass in a way that, apparently, many people find aesthetically pleasing.
"Warmth" also comes from flaws in record players. As the University of Waterloo's Stanley Lipshitz once
explained to Popular Science, speaker sound and the needle's height fluctuations can cause the record to vibrate, which the needle in turn picks up and translates into a "warmer" seeming sound.