For over 15 years I've been collecting vinyl and turntables. Ready-to-go mass production turntables with entry level cartridges, wobbly tonearms and built in phono stages make records sound worse than any digital format. Clicks, noises, inner groove distortion - some people like these imperfections.
Things do change with a better playback system (turnatable (tonearm), cartridge, phono stage) when it is properly fitted and set up. Building a record playback system and collecting and listening to vinyl records - are not the same things, most people don't care what stylus compliance and tonearm resonant frequency are. Carefully built vinyl systems sound totally different comparing to digital sources and the format disadvantages are much less apparent. I guess it's safe to assume that spending $2.5k+ on a record player isn't that common thing, though.
With today's popular turntables we mainly speak about format sound differences, records don't sound better than CD, they sound different, MP3 sounds different, AAC sounds different. While differences between digital formats are less apparent, difference between digital and analog formats is much more noticeable. Vinyl sound different, handling experience is different, whole 'listening to a record' process is much more involved compared to touching screen for Spotify.<p>I think we need to put some more effort into existing digital tech, PCM and DSD are great formats, cheap, decent converters are still a problem. Considering latest trends with digital assets, collecting physical items may become thing of a past pretty soon.