I still have a turntable because my family insisted I keep it to play some old lp's, and because I admit that I have a soft spot for the superb mechanical engineering of the SME 3009 arm. I just like looking at it. When I upgraded my front end by replacing the Quad 33 pre amp with an RME ADI-2 I lost the analogue MM input (and gained rather better sound quality). So I bought the Pro-ject phono pre amp with digital (and analogue) output. Of course it does the RIAA equalization, but I have no idea if it does it in the analogue or the digital domain (probably in analogue because it also has a line output). And of course using it into my ADI-2 involves a double conversion, from analogue to digital and back, but I am not concerned because such conversions tend to measure far better than any vinyl rig and should be completely transparent (the ADI-2 is certainly sonically perfect, and the Pro-ject almost certainly). I hear no obvious sonic defects other than the inherent weaknesses of vinyl compared to digital. To be honest, it is only rarely used.