Will a $700 turntable outperform a CD player?

It isn't that simple. That's because many commercial CDs and digital files have been substantially compressed as part of the Loudness Wars, while an LP may be given kinder treatment and have a wider dynamic range. Digital often doesn't take advantage of its theoretical technical advantages.

 Agree, but CDs choice is huge. And modern DACs play DSD... 

If you buy a good high-end turntable and pickup arm, future upgrades won't be required or even necessarily advantageous. (Although you will have to replace your stylus or phono cartridge every so often.)

Yes, but "hi-end" is a key word here. 

Hmmm, you make digital sound like a money pit.

:-))  Only if you buy new and don't know what you are doing.

Sometimes. 

I pay for a nos dac 24 dollars....The sound is totally holographic and not veiled by digital glare.... Upgrading dont come to my mind you know why?

Because with a good source already the increasing in S.Q. comes more way more from the way you controls the 3 embeddings of the audio system....

I pity those who spend thousand and thousand of dollars for at best a microscope or a " digital sounding dac", mine sound like a tube amplifier with details.... The reason is the dac is good to begins with but the controls of the embeddings very good .... I know because it takes me 2 years of experiments each weeks to go there with the same speakers, dac, and amplifier....The difference is staggering...

No upgrade of dac 2 years ago  at any price would have given me that...... And i will die with the dac  i own now....If i win big money i will buy other speakers but first a tube Berning Zotl amplifier.... :)

Vinyl rules. Digital - not so much!

In my humble opinion, yes