clipdin says:
I don’t know what I’m missing by moving up.
I would appreciate any and all suggestions.
Quite so. And nobody here helping with that either. Oh well. This will help.
Whether turntable, cartridge, or arm, what you're missing and what you will get when moving up is refinement. That's mainly what you will notice as you move up from your budget/entry level setup. Dynamics, extension and detail improve as well. But mostly its refinement. Which if you stop to think about it, detail is more refined, dynamics more refined, extension at both ends, ditto.
That's the big picture. Zoom in and you will see the three main components- table, arm, and cartridge- each contributes to this in its own way.
The cartridge generates the signal. With a better cartridge you should easily hear big improvements in dynamics, detail, and extension. Cymbals and guitars sound more like cymbals and guitars.
But all the cartridge does is wiggle. If the arm also wiggles, which being attached to a vibrating cartridge it is bound to do, then together all that wiggling is gonna blur and confuse the sound. So a good arm is equally as important as the cartridge you mount on it.
The turntable only has to be stable. That's all. Stable at 33 1/3, stable in spite of spinning, stable in spite of the wiggly cartridge and arm vibrating like hell all the time. If the speed isn't stable you don't hear pitch changing. None of them are that bad. What happens instead is big dynamics like bass, the extra drag of the groove oscillating actually slows the platter just enough to rob the music of its drive and immediacy. A cheap table actually sucks the life out of the music.
A noisy table, you never hear the noise. Rumble, only time you are gonna hear rumble is a 20 year old Technics with a dry bearing. Instead what happens is the very slight rumble that is way too low to be heard is nevertheless not too low to obscure the faint micro-details that are what make the hairs on your neck stand up when you get the eerie feeling of the singer actually being there between the speakers.
So now you take all that and apply it to your situation. If what you want is something quick and easy that will make a big obvious improvement then forget Rule #1 which is a stupid rule anyway and get the best cartridge you can afford. You will be happy. Believe me. Very, very happy.
Anything other than that and it will help to start thinking a lot more long term. You might for example get the best turntable you can afford and use it with a cheaper arm and cartridge for the time being. Even the cheapest arm/cartridge on a really good table is going to sound great. But it will be a different sort of great from the cheap table better cartridge sound. If you have a nice quiet room where you are able to sit and focus and enjoy listening deep into recordings then you will probably prefer this. Because the better table will reveal a wealth of previously unimagined hidden detail. But if you are up and around or your room isn't very quiet then this will be harder to appreciate and you might prefer the more easily heard changes you'll get with a new cartridge.
You know why they say your mileage may vary? Because it varies.
