Are there digital front ends with the body...

As several have mentioned you need to stick with something specifically designed to reproduce the old analog sound, such as Tvad suggests. Analog has advantages in many areas such as "soft clipping" on tape etc. Many older generation audio professionals prefer analog for certain applications because of how it modifies the sound in a desirable way - for example analog is very good at compression (reducing dynamics) with less risk of sounding bad. Many people prefer that old analog tape sound as opposed to the unforgiving digital sound.

I think it is hard to deliberately replicate this sound using a device that takes CD digital and modifies it (after all, the analog sound is part of an entire studio and manufacturing process).

Doug Sax (of Sheffield labs fame) still uses his brother's designed tube amp circuitry to help create CD masters that have some compression, warmer vocals and a bass kick drum punch. If you buy Doug Sax Mastered CD's then you may find them a just bit closer to old analog sound than others...just two cents.

Yes, my modded sony scd-1. Great soundstage and texture (body) to the music as well as timbre (air) around the instruments. Vinyl is great but very hit and miss as someone mentioned and much maintenance.

Chuck

My Audio Aero Prima mk2 (with van den Hul Orchid XLR ics and van den Hul Mainsserver pc) was enough for me to forget about vinyl altogether. No more surface noise ruining the music and no more worry about something getting broken.

Now, it is much harder to get digital to sound good that it is analog. But the effort was totally worth it for me in the end. So to answer your question: yes.

Arthur

They sound different. I've heard many expensive digital setups as well as owning a few of my own. Interesting to me how the digital fans knock the media side of vinyl. The media side of digital is what drove me back to vinyl. Thought for the day: How often do you think the manufacturers think about us audiophiles? One of the scariest things I used to read on a cd when I went to buy it: "Newly Remastered" or similar. I knew as soon as I read that, I was screwed. That meant I was going to hear a bunch of little details in the recording extremely artificially bloated. That and so many of the all digital stuff just sounds so sterile and fake. YUK! Not for me. You like it, you buy it. I'll put up with my vinyl pitfalls any day over that dreadful digititis. Enjoy the music.

The Audiomeca Mephisto IIX has a very robust presentation. Unfortunately, it is no longer made but they do come up used now and again.