How much do you need to spend to get digital to rival analog?

sadono97 posts

Please post your system. Thanks.

Mike, I was not trying to attack you. Sometime we do not realized how other people hear/read our words and I was just suggesting, "it seems like, or appears" I gave an example of digital remasters of old David Bowie records that sound much better than the original analog audio in direct AB comparison with volumes matched (EXTREMELY important). I do believe this is because the original masters were poor not due to any defect or superiority of these formats.
Yes, originally digital was touted as this, that and the other. We audiophiles were scratching our heads wondering with all the theory what went wrong because it did not sound so hot. Several decades later most of the problems have come to light the big one being that you have to master in a different way to suit either analog or digital playback. Done correctly without dynamic compression and with playback no lower than 96/24 I know that digital can provide state of the art results in particular with live recordings that have the inherent background noise of a live situation. Right now I am listening to the MPS re release of George Duke's Faces in Reflection. Analog all the way and wonderful. 95 dB and I feel like the band is right in front of me.
Raul, I love the analogy of our brains being ADCs. They are!
Atdavid, there is always a reason and searching for that reason allows us to fix problems instead of compounding them. 
In a nut shell some of us think Analog is inherently better and some of us think digital is inherently better. Some of us think it depends. I will place myself in the third group with the caveat that ultimately digital will prevail.
It allow us to do things that are impossible in the analog domain like room control and seamless bass management. It allows us to go online and download music in a heartbeat to the most efficient form of storage, a hard drive now in 24 bit formats w/o lossy compression. If there are any detrimental sonic artifacts left they will eventually be banished and Mike L will sell his analog stuff to the Smithsonian for display with the Write Brother's Flyer and other Dinosaurs. I'm a hopeless romantic so I will hold on to mine:)

The second and third posts in this thread, and Mike Lavigne’s post, are correct. If you enjoy and seek the sound analog creates then no amount of money spent on digital will be able to replicate the analog experience.

rbstehno nailed it. IME, for most audiophiles' analog or digital budgets (let's say $100 - $15,000) digital yields better quality sound. If this question were asked 8+ years ago, the $ range would be different. Between analog requiring a TT, a cartridge, a phono preamp an isolation platform not to mention brushes, record cleaners etc. there are simply many more components to purchase versus digital which as we know is a DAC and a  computer and now there are models integrating both into one. Once you get >~$15,000 things balance out. At the level I'm at (Aqua Formula xHD) + the convenience of unlimited music at your fingertips, spinning records has no appeal.