You might want to check out more details on their setup -- Avid with what tonearm and cartridge? If you liked that system, it could establish a baseline for cost comparisons.
Quite nice systems are available for under $2k as mentioned by Nrchy and even under $1k as per Bob. Very, very nice systems are available for about $5k (e.g., the highly rated Origin Live Resolution system, probably with a Shelter cartridge or very nice VPI or Teres systems). At $10k or under, you can go nuts with extremely nice systems. The best of the best might be in that category or in the "way over $10k" price range, depending on your tastes. There are some good used buys at under $1K that could get you started (e.g., I got my AR turntable with a Linn Basik arm and a cartridge for about $500 or so).
CD's can sound very good on great systems. Lower cost turntables will, in my limited experience, provide you some tradeoffs where you might give up one thing for another -- e.g., bass slam for clearer cymbols. A very nice turntable will be superior to a cd player except in terms of convenience -- provided the record is in good shape. However, many folks (my wife included) do not hear the difference with casual listening (but I really like my cd setup). Any moderately serious listening to a good recording will make the differences obvious. To my ears, they are not so night and day different as to ruin cd forever, but fine analog beats out the cd across the board.
Caveat: My upgraded turntable is an Origin Live Sovereign with their Conquerer tonearm and the Dynavector XV-1s cartridge compared to my digital setup of a California Audio CL-10 feeding the Perpetual Technologies P1-A and Wright modded P3-A DAC's with the custom Wright power supply. The replacement cost of that turntable is about three times the cost of the digital setups. My earlier comparison was to a turntable setup costing about one fifth that of the digital system. I've never done a direct equal dollar comparison.
Quite nice systems are available for under $2k as mentioned by Nrchy and even under $1k as per Bob. Very, very nice systems are available for about $5k (e.g., the highly rated Origin Live Resolution system, probably with a Shelter cartridge or very nice VPI or Teres systems). At $10k or under, you can go nuts with extremely nice systems. The best of the best might be in that category or in the "way over $10k" price range, depending on your tastes. There are some good used buys at under $1K that could get you started (e.g., I got my AR turntable with a Linn Basik arm and a cartridge for about $500 or so).
CD's can sound very good on great systems. Lower cost turntables will, in my limited experience, provide you some tradeoffs where you might give up one thing for another -- e.g., bass slam for clearer cymbols. A very nice turntable will be superior to a cd player except in terms of convenience -- provided the record is in good shape. However, many folks (my wife included) do not hear the difference with casual listening (but I really like my cd setup). Any moderately serious listening to a good recording will make the differences obvious. To my ears, they are not so night and day different as to ruin cd forever, but fine analog beats out the cd across the board.
Caveat: My upgraded turntable is an Origin Live Sovereign with their Conquerer tonearm and the Dynavector XV-1s cartridge compared to my digital setup of a California Audio CL-10 feeding the Perpetual Technologies P1-A and Wright modded P3-A DAC's with the custom Wright power supply. The replacement cost of that turntable is about three times the cost of the digital setups. My earlier comparison was to a turntable setup costing about one fifth that of the digital system. I've never done a direct equal dollar comparison.