Usually people into digital go cheap with analog and vice versa. Check out Fremer’s comparisons between digital and his analog setup, usually a 5-digit dac vs his $250k analog. Valid comparison?
IMO, you have to spend many times more for a tt setup than a good CD player and dac. For $3000, you won’t get a good sounding tt setup if you include the tt, arm, cartridge, alignment tools, phono preamp, step up transformer, and all the cables. For $3k, you can go with a Music Hall tt, a decent cartridge, a phono preamp, and a couple good pairs of cables and this will sound OK, will it beat a $3k dac, not a chance.
My analog setup costs multiple times the cost of my dac, and playing a good MQA song, still sounds better than vinyl. Vinyl usually sounds as good or better (depending on recording) than redbook, where it starts getting more equal and digital starts sounding better is when playing hires/DSD/MQA songs. Just my opinion.
