Will a $700 turntable outperform a CD player?

@twoleftears 

Usually the car that goes around corners better will out perform acceleration. Driver dependent of coarse

Adding my 2 cents, vinyl setup *requires* a cleaning regimen to have even satisfactory sound. It’s a pain-in-the-rear, but without cleaning records they are noisy as hell. I enjoy my dads vinyl, and it has its moments, but CDs are far and away more consistently pleasing and satisfying. 
If you want to choose one or the other, my vote would be to spend your $700 on a Chord DAC. You’ll find *much* more of that Liquidy *analogue* sound that is so pleasing. 

@chakster 
As a retiree that's a little insulting. But in my case it's also true. I am a candidate for knee replacement and I have no desire to sit through several songs I don't want to hear to get to the song I do want to hear. With CDs I can touch a button on a remote. Problem solved. If there was an option for me that meant I didn't have to get up constantly I would buy a turntable. But that brings me to another problem brought up bt paulburnett.

@paulburnett

I go to thrift stores to look for CDs and like you said they are there cheap. Some stores have incredible selections of classical recordings which is what I am mostly looking for. When I look over at the LPs there's always at least one person perusing through the bin. Those people know what they are doing and it's very unlikely they are going to leave any gold nuggets behind. The alternative is to pay exorbitant prices for LPs at specialty shops or eBay. Not going to happen on a fixed income, at least not for me.

I'm not going to make the argument that CDs can compare in sound quality to vinyl. But let's not forget the importance of the engineer's dedication to sound quality. Some labels sound great. While others suck. Every jazz CD I have on Bluenote is of very high SQ. Most of Leonard Cohen's recordings on Columbia are superb. While some other artists I have on Columbia are of mediocre quality. There should be industry standards but it seems many labels don't care about the group of people who actually care about sound quality. 

@mahgister...By acoustical embeddings do you mean room treatment? If so, I'd be interested to know what you do. I feel like I should explore this before spending money to change components.