Are there digital front ends with the body...

Yes, my modded sony scd-1. Great soundstage and texture (body) to the music as well as timbre (air) around the instruments. Vinyl is great but very hit and miss as someone mentioned and much maintenance.

Chuck

My Audio Aero Prima mk2 (with van den Hul Orchid XLR ics and van den Hul Mainsserver pc) was enough for me to forget about vinyl altogether. No more surface noise ruining the music and no more worry about something getting broken.

Now, it is much harder to get digital to sound good that it is analog. But the effort was totally worth it for me in the end. So to answer your question: yes.

Arthur

They sound different. I've heard many expensive digital setups as well as owning a few of my own. Interesting to me how the digital fans knock the media side of vinyl. The media side of digital is what drove me back to vinyl. Thought for the day: How often do you think the manufacturers think about us audiophiles? One of the scariest things I used to read on a cd when I went to buy it: "Newly Remastered" or similar. I knew as soon as I read that, I was screwed. That meant I was going to hear a bunch of little details in the recording extremely artificially bloated. That and so many of the all digital stuff just sounds so sterile and fake. YUK! Not for me. You like it, you buy it. I'll put up with my vinyl pitfalls any day over that dreadful digititis. Enjoy the music.

The Audiomeca Mephisto IIX has a very robust presentation. Unfortunately, it is no longer made but they do come up used now and again.

I have done a full AB comparison over a few days between an Orpheus Heritage DAC and Zero cd transport and the exotic Vyger Indian Signature TT/Dynavector Karat. Both above $40k a set.

On the same audiophile recordings, similarly mastered, i could hardly tell the difference, apart from occasional surface noise on vinyl, even favouring the cd on the attributes you mentioned. I suspect a cartridge, cable or recording change, would favour either one over the other.

Short of the Heritage, however, nothing digital before (in my last 25 years of listening) came close to vinyl.