Have digital players improved

Yes. Is the short answer. The ones I have tried are more natural, focused & cleaner than earlier versions. Not forgetting the ability to play higher sample rates.

In my personal opinion, both vinyl and digital have greatly improved. Most week nights I listen to a music server and have used highly modified Oppos. With the Apple remote, I can just touch an album or play list and have it play. I get a very real sound stage and dynamic with great bass and top end extension. Were I to not have a vinyl system I would be very happy. What do I prefer about my vinyl system, simply realism! Have I always had it? No! I have a fine tt, a Bergman Sindre and the Ortofon A-90 cartridge, but when I got the BMC MCCI phono stage I was just dumbfounded with what I heard. Do I get tired of changing records? Yes. Life is not a picnic.

Wolf Garcia said it best earlier, brilliantly using artistic metaphor...that guy is so interesting. Again, I add that I find a nice turntable rig is the only way to play LPs that haven't been turned into digital files (I suppose I could do that but it seems like a pain in the ass). The ONLY WAY as they won't fit in a CD drawer and without a turntable they're merely large cardboard and vinyl objects on a shelf.

Also, dear "Goners", please learn the proper use of and differences between "they're", "their", and "there" so as to make yourself at least SEEM a little smarter, and to make the world a better place.

Wolf_garcia, you might add confusing here with hear, weather with whether, and not using the subjunctive correctly. It is "if I were to guess," not "if I was to guess." It is not a matter of seeming smarter, it is communicating.

I think digital has risen to the level of analog as long as it is a well sorted out system.

I grew up with tubes and turntables for the better part of my life and hated CDs when they first came out. Now it's all nostalgia for me and nothing more.

Yes, I can hear the difference from out in a hall as to whether of not a TT or CDP is playing but I think that is due to my memory being able to sort it out and it is nothing more than a romantic notion that compels me to listen. Even TVs were tubed in my days and that adds a lot of conditioning to what I thought was accurate sound. Being conditioned so makes me prefer, at first, analog to digital, but what I perceive to be the more accurate is digital.

I'm even willing to state that what I hear from a TT, though great sounding, is ever so slightly off the mark in terms of accuracy, like an overly warm tube would be in an amp: romantic at first blush but not accurate.

Its been a long time since I've heard a good TT rig but from what I remember, there is that instant background noise floor that comes across as dark grey instead of black and now that my ears are used to the silence between notes from a digital source, a TT is just that more noisy as to be noticeable so as to be a distraction. And, like tubes, if one were to change out an arm or cartridge there is an immediate difference that most anyone could tell which begs the question: where is/was the accuracy that is so highly touted?

If one can change the nature of playback by changing a cartridge (or tube) then the accuracy question is not really a question but is nothing more than a flavor or coloring that one prefers for the moment. And that I can do without.

I only say this from how I prefer to listen and not as any kind of knock on those who love the sound of TTs. This is nothing more than a rationalization of my listening preferences, in response the OPs question.

All the best,
Nonoise