All other things being equal, in my experience a good turntable/cartridge/Phono preamp combination still beats the crap out a good DAC or a CD (even when the digital unit is tuned and tweaked to sound as warm and analog as possible).
Good digital will beat middling or mediocre analog but it will not beat out a out a good analog rig.
If vinyl noise is an issue I would suggest you try a Sugarcube by a company called SweetVinyl. This component removes the the ticks and pops inaudibly-- and even though yes, it does this digitally (in the time domain), the AD-DA conversion is studio quality and in virtually all cases you will be unable to hear this device in your chain whether it's engaged or bypassed (they use hard relays for bypass so the audio passes through none of their circuitry). This is my opinion, but I do have a fairly high resolution system that picks up minute detail. I use it for noisy records only, usually it's in bypass mode. They have models that also rip your vinyl, split the tracks, and allow you to easily add the metadata just by entering the LP's catalog number. Best of both worlds.
Good digital will beat middling or mediocre analog but it will not beat out a out a good analog rig.
If vinyl noise is an issue I would suggest you try a Sugarcube by a company called SweetVinyl. This component removes the the ticks and pops inaudibly-- and even though yes, it does this digitally (in the time domain), the AD-DA conversion is studio quality and in virtually all cases you will be unable to hear this device in your chain whether it's engaged or bypassed (they use hard relays for bypass so the audio passes through none of their circuitry). This is my opinion, but I do have a fairly high resolution system that picks up minute detail. I use it for noisy records only, usually it's in bypass mode. They have models that also rip your vinyl, split the tracks, and allow you to easily add the metadata just by entering the LP's catalog number. Best of both worlds.