When you start out by saying “I don’t see why people want to spend lots of money on turntables and connect to something that digitises the sound and then undoes it again to play on a speaker… ”, can you understand that people would consider that “questioning the maths”?  No mention of DAC quality (which is also an audiophile myth), no mention of cable quality (yet another myth), just “digitizes . . . and then undoes it”.

Unfortunately there isn’t a best for playback of any source not just vinyl.

The interaction between your room and the speakers has a big impact on sound so what sounds good to me in my room within my budget, doesn’t mean it would sound good to you in your room.

Depending on budget, if you just want Stereo playback I personally would use a 2.1 or 2.0 system with room correction over the mythical best speakers for listening to X. The room correction will give a more pleasurable sound and a 2.1 setup a wider choice of suitably sized speakers for a room than chasing down rabbit holes of signal purity and best speakers for X.

If you want your turntable integrated into a wider Sonos system I would connect it to a Sonos port and connect the port to either an AVR or the newer integrated stereo receivers/network streamers with sub outputs and room correction.

I have owned both the Sonos Port connected to a power amp and via an AVR as well as the Sonos Amp. Using the same Fyne Audio F500 and F300i + Sub speakers a £400 Yamaha RX-V4A with room correction produces a far nicer sound to me in my room than a Sonos Port or Amp connected to the same speakers. Depending on the music being played both the Port and Amp would over emphasise the bass and lack of room correction with limited audio controls meant the Port and Amp were more sensitive to speaker positioning and lacked consistency across sources.

I used to have the Sonos Port connected to a power amp and then later to my A6A with Amps in two other rooms where I listened to music. My actual Sonos speakers were only ever really used for background music and not a match for the Port/Amp + Passive speaker setups.

My personal preference for speakers would be Fyne Audio F700/F500 series. While my main room has always been easy to setup speaker wise and get a wide soundstage, with my current Fyne 5.2.2 setup the F700 as LR and F500 before them were very easy to place in the room.

Yes, I’m one of those double audio heretics, who not only uses 2.1 and room correction for stereo audio in some rooms, I also use my A6A for stereo audio listening as well as surround audio. With well mastered sources the width, height and depth of sound stage seems to defy the size of the room at times and the speakers disappear as a distinct source of sound.

The first time I listened to Dark Side of the Moon through them, the voices and effects played behind me so clearly I even checked if I’d accidentally enabled some upmixing in my A6A and it was using the rear speakers.

War of the worlds expands and contracts the sound stage in between and far wider than the speakers as it changes between the small enclosed locations and open spaces of the story. Martians whistle above and front to back, the cylinder unscrews off to the right beyond where the speaker is.

The downside is poor quality sources and masters sound poor. My main listening Fyne and A6A setup and V4As in other rooms with Fyne/Dali 2.1 setups don’t hide how poor they sound unlike other speaker setups I’ve had in the past.

I think that’s just the way your mind goes to be fair… I expect many would instead take a view of why digitise an analogue signal, when for most, the use of vinyl is about an analogue sound which Sonos is not. As I said, use a Port (via tape loop) if you want to be able to occasionally stream the audio around the house. Otherwise an all analogue signal path is much more natural for Vinyl, and for £1000 there are some very good analogue amplifier/speaker combinations available. 

This is definitely the biggest battle these days, especially with all the software ‘correction’ and loudness nonsense that gets applied to a lot of mastering. Can you believe they’ve put Freddie Mercury’s voice through Auto-tune on the new reissue of their first album? The mind boggles. 

What makes it “much more natural” if the math (which you are “not questioning”) says there’s no difference? 

If the turntable, amplifier and speaker enclosures were made of real wood, it would be more natural? 

While it initially sounds a bit “um, what?” With reflection part of me thinks FM/Queen would approve. They were no strangers to messing around and experimenting with video and audio recording during the years, so doesn’t seem that out there.

Having grown up through the dismal loudness wars CD mastering period I can think of many more things I want remastering ahead of a Queen/FM album, but they won’t sell as well I guess.