The best way to start adding A=analog to my system

I too prefer the direct drive route, tried a number of belt drives over the years, always left me wanting for slam, drive. If you can handle diy route, one can put together very nice setup starting with Technics SP10 MkII, and really for pennies on the dollar if you're judicious with choices and have maker skills.

I'll maintain it cost bucks to build entire top flight analog setup. Diy tt route, various Denon 103 modified cartridges will help keep costs down, $2-3K phono stages don't do it for me.

The issue with analog is once you've attained highly resolving and natural sounding digital setup, cost of analog exponentially goes up. Digital incurs major costs attaining analog like flavor, analog incurs major costs attaining best digital resolution.

@ghdprentice  I couldn't agree more! While I'm not at point where my vinyl setup on par with streaming and cd rips, I do hear the convergence as painstaking work on my digital setup has provided much more analog like sound quality. My take is greatest expenditures for digital is spent achieving analog like sound qualities, greatest for analog is resolving capabilities.

My take for those running both analog and digital setups is your audio costs have just gone up exponentially. There will be long battle in one upsmanship between the two, you listen to your vinyl setup, love the ease and luxury, want to replicate that with your digital, love the resolving capabilities of your digital, want to replicate that with your vinyl.

I'd rather have one great setup between analog and digital rather than two mediocre setups. So, if I were you, I'd upgrade the digital or wait and save for top flight vinyl setup. Both mijostyn and ghdprentice make good points.

My vinyl setup is more costly than what your budgeting for and rarely gets played since my digital outperforms it. Continuing to go with two setups has been costly for me,  getting two setups to be competitive with each other has resulted in far greater expenditure vs. what I would have spent with only one top flight system. I'm now in position that $10k phono stage and at least $2k cartridge will be required to compete with digital, cha ching, cash register keeps on adding up. I'd likely give up vinyl if I didn't have 3k+ albums.

@clearthinker I wasn't making blanket statement with digital vs. analog, just directed solely at my present setups. What you suggest I do has been often contemplated by me. Which brings to mind another factor is starting vinyl setup from scratch. I purchased vast majority of my records back in 80's at record shows and used record stores, I don't recall ever paying much more than $10, often $5 or less for these albums. Last time I went through some of my albums to determine values, I discovered some hot stampers and other rather rare albums, in some cases value was into the $100's. Since this was a few years ago, I'd expect values have only gone up, When I think in this manner it would seem a no-brainer to sell off entire collection and vinyl setup. At this point 50/50 as to whether I do this or not.

This also brings to mind that starting vinyl setup from scratch these days would be a no go for me. Between inflation and far more sophisticated vinyl market where record values easily determined, it would be far too costly for me.

Another aspect of digital vs. analog that favors digital to my way of thinking is access to far more music with streaming vs. vinyl, the very reason I've concentrated on digital upgrades vs analog. While $3k+ albums seems like a large collection, it pales in comparison to streaming. Also, the storage of these albums is a bear, I've got albums stashed all over my house, simply takes up too much physical space in listening room to have more than perhaps one quarter of them at the ready for playing. I just may have talked myself out of maintaining this mass 🤔

But then, there is the nostalgic factor and the nice cover  and gatefold art. Also, having actual physical media gives one a feeling of ownership, real intrinsic value. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/10/24/the-psychology-behind-why-we-value-physical-objects-over-digital/