Am I assuming too Much?

I recently added my old Dual turntable with Stanton 500 cartridge and NAD phono preamp to my 2 channel system. Just wanted to play some old stuff I hadn't heard in a while and to transfer some to CD. However I was quite shocked that my TT sounds very near as good as my $2200 CDP. Tharefore my assumption is that if my old TT with a cheap cartridge sounds 98% as good than a table ie Music Hall MMF-7 should make my records sound even better than my cd's. Does this seem like a proper assumption