See the story from a day or two ago about how badly CDs are being mastered.
Personally, I listen to a lot of non-English music and I'm beginning to wonder if part of the reason might be that non-US music companies seem to be much less likely to utterly destroy their music in the quest for illusory volume, because the "foreignness" is not something that I particularly care about either way.
Try your experiment on a CD from the mid-nineties. It is highly likely that what you are experiencing is a result of atrocious mastering, and not a digital-vs-analog result. Note that it has to be a CD that physically dates from the mid-nineties, not merely an album from the mid-nineties, as companies have been going back and destroying the old music on re-releases.
Of course that doesn't address the issue of your personal memories and if you like that, hey, great. I'm not going to complain or tell you it shouldn't be that way.