I was always fond of the LK140 and Ninka's were pretty good passive and came into their own as an attractive active system - easy to convert as well I remember.
Look, with a vinyl system, if you lose info or distort it in the turntable, arm and cartridge followed by the phono stage, you can never ever get it back. I did enough dems back in the day and am fine with that concept. Put a so-so turntable system into a decent amp and top quality speakers and the sound really does shrink and suffer generally. You'd be amazed how a bottom level AT95E cartridge can refine and 'improve' as the deck and arm it's fitted to get better. Obviously high end vinyl these days is a luxury (Naim have just announced a £16,000 player and that's cheap in some quarters and middling in Linn ones), but you can do well for a lot less. The Linn LP12 is a success story all its own with regular updates (which have progressively taken the 'fruitbox' out of the sound - you'd need to know the thing well to understand) and the colourations the older ones had always made records sound 'interesting to listen to' even if the didn't deserve to.
Digital, especially today, is so good and basically transparent even at the bottom price range that I have no qualms whatsoever in agreeing that the speakers and room are the most important thing - oh, and an amp which is able to drive said speakers without distortion/clipping...