How much do I need to spend to make vinyl sound better than digital?

ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS.

Seriously though. Despite what @ntpc4 claims (and baseless generalizations like that suck anyway), my $60K analog front end still completely smokes my $16K network streamer every day of the week. It’s not even close. :)

Vinyl sounds so good on my system I rarely even bother with digital, unless I want to audition some music I might buy on vinyl, or I want to play music that was recorded digitally in the first place. Vinyl for me is just about always more satisfying for listening to music. But I've been doing it for a long time, and have some 5000+ LPs.

Vinyl can never sound like SACD on a good player 

Before you spend any more, ensure your set up is spot on. If you aren't comfortable doing this yourself, enlist the help of someone who can. Pay them if you have to. Making sure you have that last ounce of performance out of your current rig can help you decide if you want to go further.

And I also agree with comments regarding how important the phono stage is.

Thanks, BigTwin. For a newbie who’s never seen it before, you made my day!

@lousyreeds1 

There is a great deal of good information and opinion in the above comments (thanks jpan, ghdprentice, mulveing, et.al.).

One key point - the gear is sounds no better than the source!  Always consider the quality of the recording that you are hearing BEFORE AND AFTER focusing on the gear...

After decades in this hobby, I strongly disagree with the statement that "You could spend $100K on the most esoteric turntable, cartridge, tonearm, base, cables, and phono stage, and its potential sound quality will never equal that of spending $10K on a network player/streamer and DAC. It just is what it is." 

To me, that is simply uninformed hyperbole: My experiences lead to the exact opposite conclusion.

For perspective - I attended a recent HiFi show, listening to dozens of modern digital systems (usually music-servers) from prominent manufactures.  I heard systems from most of the great manufacturers, plus many could-be-great-someday brands.   

ALL of the digital music was flat, homogenized and unengaging (always playing simple jazz - the 'slow pitch' of musical reproduction). 

I asked a couple vendors to play something more demanding, e.g. symphonic music.  NOT ONE of the digital systems (10k to 50k) sound sounded good, and certainly not as good as a 12K analogue system (~ 4k TT, 2k cart, 4k Phono-Pre). 

The next day I  listening at the doors as I walked down the hall.  I could immediately tell if the music was from a digital source (most were). Sadly, they were all-of-a-kind.  I could hear differences in speakers, but the sound was always quite limited. No point in entering the room...

Is Analogue is always better than digital - No. 

I once listened to a great digital-system in a showroom that was on-par with a good analogue system, but digital front-end cost >60K (total system was >1120k).  Still, it did not better sound better-in every-way than a typical 20k analogue source.  The digital sound had excellent resolution and truly 'black-backgrounds', but it did not match the harmonic richness of good analogue sources.

Sorry if this upsets the apple cart, but I encourage you to listen to more analogue systems, playing well recorded music.  I think that you will be pleasantly surprised.

Happy hunting.

P.S. my 2024 hearing test results indicated that I had markedly better-than-average hearing for my 60+ years.