Where do you buy the system you listed for "circa 2000"? Presumably you mean dollars and not some exotic cryptocurrency.
I mean it’s exactly the kind of system an enthusiast might have bought 20 years ago, around the year 2000. Yes, it would be much more than $2000, even then. It's fine gear - but probably NOT a great microscope into recordings by today's standards.
The article is behind a paywall now, but I was able to read it a few days ago. It’s really about Better Records and their selection process, so posing it as "Vinyl vs. Digital" is clickbait-worthy. The Better Records guy bashes all modern reissues (along with the companies that make them), chiding one particular reissue as sounding "dun dun dun" (or something like that) in the bass - and I can’t help but thinking it’s his old Legacy Focus speakers doing that 😂