Whether the some of the (best?) digital systems sounds as good as the best analogue systems isn't the question we should be asking, but rather how close to real does our choice take us and at what cost? I am admittedly not an expert, my opinions that follow are based upon my own (possibly faulty) reasoning from years of being in the hobby and reading the usual stuff geared towards the hobbyist.
I read herein where someone pointed out that record sales are up, that is true. And another says that records released today were cut mostly from digital sources, true again. Record sales are up from where they were. After the release of the CD, and for the following 10 years or so, the CD dominated the market so much that they nearly wiped out vinyl record production completely (and most of the experienced recording engineers retired or left to other careers as well) . Sony had the copyright to the process, Philips (their partner), the copyright to the transport mechanism. They cornered the market and the money was rolling in.
But people started to become dissatisfied with CD sound. Stories started circulating that if you used a green marker to colour the rim of the CD it would prevent scattered red laser waves from distorting sound, and the rest. Manufacturer's tried to get around the Sony/Philips copyrights by inverting the platter or designing a completely different transport that had nothing in common with the Philips model, increasing byte size and sampling rates or going bit-stream to get around the Sony copyrights. All this technology increased the price of products and placated customers for a bit, but it didn't bring the sound of digital music to the level of good analogue, yet... it continues.
People on this forum talk about "upgrading" to level four Wadax. Have you seen what that costs? The Wadax Atlantis Transport sells in the UK for £110,000.00 , the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC for £160,000.00 , the Akasa optical dual for £26,000.00 and the Wadax Reference Power Supply for £50,000.00 . Will that expenditure guarantee better sound than any turntable playing vinyl records? It looks to me like the industry has hooked you and is using your in for a penny/in for a pound commitment to clean you out.
Sony hasn't given up trying to get all the bananas either. They have bought up companies that hold the rights to music left right and centre and keep the master tapes locked up. I hear that Sony will only release DSD copies of the master tapes to companies that wish to re-master/cut records. It appears to me that Sony wants to flood the vinyl market with digital to vinyl LPs so that the younger buyer never gets access to a medium that sounds better than their digital. Dilute until lost to memory (to all but a few of us analogue die hards). Heaven forbid that the youth of today accidentally hear an inexpensive record player playing an analogue record that sounds better than their streamer and earbuds.
Why would anyone think that digital technology will not (or doesn't already) surpass analogue replay systems in the ability to reproduce the same emotions and feelings that live music does? Start with the premise that the best amplifier is a straight wire with gain. Every component added, every processing step, degrades from that ideal. Take sound waves and convert them to measurements, then reconstruct those measurements (only, not that which wasn't measured) back into sound waves with all the necessary converters, filters, processes and components to do that, and see if the results sound as good as a cartridge, SUT, valve phono, triode amp and high sensitivity paper speakers do.
