Will a $700 turntable outperform a CD player?

It seems like you need to spend around $2 towards a vinyl rig to equal $1 on the digital rig. That is my experience anyway. That is just the equipment. That doesn’t factor in the expensive audiophile pressings that really bring things to life.

That said, I prefer vinyl. I like the ritual of playing lps and love the sound. I’m way deeper (cost wise) into vinyl so I can out‐preform my modest streamer and DAC. I’m ultimately ok with this though. I guess it just depends what you like ultimately.

@cal91... streaming in like the internet jukebox at the bar. You can control it from your phone and you never have to get up to swap your cd or lp. You have hundreds of cds... I have Tidal and Qobuz which each have around 50 million tracks (yes there is overlap in the catalogs). You can play entire albums front to back or you can pick through and just play the songs you want. You dont even have to skip through the unwanted tracks unless you prefer to do it that way. You can just queue up the tracks you want to hear if you would rather. If at the end of the night you were particularly fond of your listening session, you can save the whole list and revisit it again later at the push of one button. You can listen to new albums before you buy the physical copy to see if you like them.  You can revisit old albums you don't own and you can explore deeper into an artists discography. 

I am a vinyl guy first and have much more money invested in my vinyl rig. But I also have a streamer and a DAC to fill in my collection. I can't imagine not having both. My Dad is about your age and after a year of saying pretty much the same things as you I finally got him to buy a streamer... He loves it. He is discovering new music which has led to more vinyl purchases. We send eachother recommendations on newly discovered albums. He will never go back. 

You really are missing out by not even knowing what you are missing (paraphrase of what my Dad said after the fact). Best of luck.

@larry5729... I assume you mean background white-noise or record surface noise. If I am correct then you have never heard a really good vinyl rig. My turntable and phono stage are dead quite and have an ultra low noise floor. Most visitors dont even realize I have a record playing until I point it out.