Will a $700 turntable outperform a CD player?

Yes, an inexpensive, well built turntable can outperform many CD players (especially the 40 or 50 I tried from it's inception to 2005).  I have found that modern CD players, and; in particular, recent DACs with separate transports with well mastered CDs will sound superior to an inexpensive turntable.  My reference is a souped up VPI TNT VI/modified SME IV/Benz Ruby3 versus an EAR Acute and COS Engineering D2 DAC.  Now I have leveled the playing field and I get tremendous pleasure from my best records and best CDs.  My ratio of great CDs versus great LPs is is higher.  I have many less than spectacular LPs in my 25,000 collection whereas, especially jazz and classical, I have so many finely remastered CDs.  If I were a analog novice, a good old Technics would have been better than my initial setups of a Dual 1209, an Empire,  a Rotel then a Connisseur table with an Audiocraft arm.  To really get into high quality analog, I purchased a VPI 19 (upgraded to a -4) with a moded SME IV arm with a Dynavector Ruby.  That killed CDs in the 1980s and 1990s.  By 2005, my current system made CD listening as good as LP.  

It isn't that simple. That's because many commercial CDs and digital files have been substantially compressed as part of the Loudness Wars, while an LP may be given kinder treatment and have a wider dynamic range. Digital often doesn't take advantage of its theoretical technical advantages.

 Agree, but CDs choice is huge. And modern DACs play DSD... 

If you buy a good high-end turntable and pickup arm, future upgrades won't be required or even necessarily advantageous. (Although you will have to replace your stylus or phono cartridge every so often.)

Yes, but "hi-end" is a key word here. 

Hmmm, you make digital sound like a money pit.

:-))  Only if you buy new and don't know what you are doing.

Sometimes. 

I pay for a nos dac 24 dollars....The sound is totally holographic and not veiled by digital glare.... Upgrading dont come to my mind you know why?

Because with a good source already the increasing in S.Q. comes more way more from the way you controls the 3 embeddings of the audio system....

I pity those who spend thousand and thousand of dollars for at best a microscope or a " digital sounding dac", mine sound like a tube amplifier with details.... The reason is the dac is good to begins with but the controls of the embeddings very good .... I know because it takes me 2 years of experiments each weeks to go there with the same speakers, dac, and amplifier....The difference is staggering...

No upgrade of dac 2 years ago  at any price would have given me that...... And i will die with the dac  i own now....If i win big money i will buy other speakers but first a tube Berning Zotl amplifier.... :)

Vinyl rules. Digital - not so much!