At what level does analog beat digital?

I may have led a sheltered life, but I've not heard a lower cost turntable/phono pre-amp combination that lights my fire to the degree that a similarly priced digital system does. The analog system requires the turntable, tone arm, cartridge and phono pre-amp (and possibly a very good record cleaning machine). A decent combination seems to run well into the thousands of dollars. Once you get into the bigger money, analog sounds pretty darned good.

Everything is relative, and going used can help a lot and everyone has different preferences. Having said that, my personal impression is that digital gets you more bang for the buck (i.e., better sound to me) under, say, $3-$5,000. Once you hit $15-$20,000, analog sounds really good. In-between are trade-offs where I can kind of go either way depending on my mood and what I'm looking for at the time.

Before anyone shoots me, I am trying to answer the question from my perspective. The exact dollar ranges may not be right, but it's only when I hear pricy analog systems that I go "wow, that really sounds great".

Psychicanimal, I would love to get a Teres someday. I honestly believe a superb analog rig would be great in my system. But, $4,000 - 6,000 for the turntable, $3,000 for the tonearm, add the cartridge, add a great phono preamp and you are in the range I discussed above. My company did very well this year. If all goes well, I might just do some shopping in March. I will certainly check the threads here and ask for advice. Someday, I will have both an excellent analog and digital front end. Then, let the tweaks continue ;-)