Would you still pay $10k or more for a turntable not full analog front end these days ?

It's too bad that we all can't gather together and do all these comparisons. But I think I know the outcome. Other things being about equal, tape would win, and most or all of us would agree. Comparing streamers would be interesting too. Some audiophiles pay big dollars for relatively small difference, not just for streamers - for everything.

@soix -are you a network software engineer? I wrote code that used in these streamers. Yeah, I am a minority. Guess what? Network engineers ARE a minority in general population, not everyone is educated in the field. And yes, streams and Word documents are same thing from transmission perspective.

You are free to spend money on anything you want, its a free country. People buy supplements since they know better than doctors, so what. They buy ’performance’ chips for their cars. So?

No, I don’t buy $$$ power cables either. I know physics. What is your point? To convince me that code that I wrote somehow works differently because someone thinks it should? Really?

Somehow people trust their doctors but never trust engineers. Right.

for a turntable not full analog front end 

I am sorry for my stupidity but what does this sentence mean?

On the subject, the part I understand: yes I would. 90% I listen to is vinyl. I don't know what a 10K turntable sounds like but probably pretty sweet.

grislybutter, it means just the table. Tonearm, tonearm cable, cartridge and phono stage are not included.

Would you still pay $10k or more for a turntable not full analog front end these days ?

So you just wanted to start an analog vs digital argument?  You really don't have anything better to do?