Speakers 10 years old or older that can compete with todays best,

@daveyf  “…Is it possible that more experienced a'philes will have enough knowledge/experience of how to put together a system so that it has the least chance ( i'm not saying that all of these folks will not occasionally make mistakes and regress,…”

Absolutely. I think I have upgraded probably 7 times in fifty years. The last two  times it was much easier. The most recent had a very different target sound… I nailed exactly… the analog, CD, and streamer have the same sound… exactly what I was shooting for. It was very satisfying, something that started off so difficult in the beginning, is now fun and I can accurately hit a target. 

@daveyf 

By the way I have a contemporary Linn LP12… nearly Klimax. I skipped the Linn phonostage and use an Audio Research Ref 3 phonostage… so avoided the digital conversion. Not sure why they did that either. 

@ghdprentice You ask why Linn went with the digital processing at the turntable.

I would say they did it because they probably believed it would sound better, and certainly on paper, this makes some sense. Now here’s the thing, if your reference for great sound quality is a DSD file or a system that really has flaws that you cannot recognize, due to your inexperience with what is possible, then I think your understanding of what is great SQ from a system will be based on that experience.
One of the things that I think a lot of folks get confused with, here and on other a’’phile sites,is what level of SQ the member is using as a reference? To that, their ability to delineate what they hear, or do not hear, seems to vary greatly.

At this point in time, I have to say that I think that Linn and their dealers ( this also applies to a number of other manufacturers and dealers as well, not just Linn) are somewhat unaware of what the top of the heap SQ sounds like from a super high end system. As such, their belief in what constitutes SOTA is in fact far off base.

I have a pair of Albert Von Schweikert's Vortex Screens that I bought directly from Von Schweikert (who was the nicest person) in 1991. They still sound amazing. They were a great deal in 1991 and haven't degraded at all.

I bought my 3.6 Maggies about 18 years ago and could not be more satisfied.  That said, I went through a couple of amps and pre amps to get the right power as well as moving to a tube pre amp.  What made them really bloom was the addition of Mye stands and treating the room.  It was a busy 3 years, but the last 15 have been a joy of focusing on the music as my only additions have been a dac and a streamer.  Great sound and contentment are a good thing.