Will a $700 turntable outperform a CD player?

Very unlikely. Two completely different mediums. One destroys what is being played a little bit every time and the other is contactless and digital, no audible noise and at higher sampling frequencies almost indistinguishable from the true recording.

Regardless of what everyone will claim here about turntables/vinyl, they will never reach the quietness and dynamic range of a CD or SACD. An engineering impossibility.

I have a pretty good turntable and love listening to it.  Nice to look at....  but I am also real about it as well. It is a dying technology, just like anything else when its time comes. One day, something else will come and will kill digital too. Only a matter of time......

@mcmvmx:  I’m no expert, but when I wrote that, I was referring to the noted (here noted) superior sound of vinyl versus that of CD’s.  The latter are recorded at 16/44.1, while I am recording the vinyl at a conversion rate of 24/96.  So, if you start out with superior sound from vinyl and then record that at 24/96, it seemed to me that I would end up with a better sounding recording than is found on CD. I stand to be corrected if I am wrong, but an explanation would be helpful.

As a relatively new vinyl come back, I can say I prefer the overall vinyl experience vs CD/digital. Having said that, there are times when listening to LP’s simply isn’t practical. I still listen to cd’s, and I listen to a lot of digital music as well. To answer your specific question... it depends. While a “$700 table” might be able to be set up well and blow away some cd setups, it just depends. It isn’t as simple as the turntable alone. The good thing is 700.00 isn’t the end of the world investment wise. It’s still a good amount of coin, but in the big scheme of hifi land, not so much. It’s a rather inexpensive experiment. See if you can find some of your favorite bands/tunes on vinyl and do a head to head... I think you will be surprised...

Buy an SL1200 if you like to hear hum... i was a DJ too and this turntable was the best ti mix, but it's nowhere near a HiFi one.
You mentioned CD, it depends on the one you compare.  CD can be great or...mediocre. I've converted my best plates into FLAC, same fir my CD collection and now i have it all at my fingertip!
I use a good HiFi USB DAC with my soundsystem and it sounds great.  I use volumio (web interface/android client) and mpd/ncmpcpp (my linux server).
Vinyl: no thanks. Inferior media but sure it's ok if you like the sound!

This question has been around since the arrival of the first CD players in 1983! And that was the Hitachi vertical loader - $1000! I was at Audiocom (Old Greenwich, CT) and listened to it with the few discs then available. It did not sound good! No contest against the TOTL Denon DD TT/arm/cartridge! And I didn't buy my first CD player until 1992 - a Technics with a Bit-Stream DAC! Now I have seven or more players of varying pedigrees - and 2000+ CDs. But I still collect, clean and play LPs, even with all their hassles! And prefer that vinyl sound over the the silent backgrounds and convenience of digital! Apples and pears. I guess! And the TT collection has grown to 20 or so! OCD! Not to mention my guitar collection!