Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.


I’ve been a vinyl lover for a few years now and I have an ortofon black cartridge setup with an mmf 5.1 turntable with acrylic platter and speed controller. My question to all the vinyl audiophiles out there is this. How much difference does a turntable really make compared to the cartridge? Will I hear a significant difference if I upgraded my turntable and kept the same cartridge? Isn’t the cartridge 90%+ of the sound from a vinyl setup? Thank you guys in advance for an honest discussion on this topic. 
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Showing 5 responses by atmasphere

The Rohloff hubs are very cool but heavy.
@mijostyn If you run belt drive its as light as any other system unless you run a single speed...
Atma-Sphere, I will never ride a bike with anything but Campy on it. That Jap stuff is cheap overweight crap. It only worked better if you did not know how to shift.
My current bike is a Specialized S works Diverge with Campy Super Record 12 speed EPS disc brake group. Fulcrum Carbon tubeless rims with Hutchinson Sector 32 tires. Perfect bike for an old fart with bad wrists:)
@mijostyn

Back in the 70s Campy was heavier, shifted slower and less precisely than the alloy SunTour stuff.

I got rid of derailleurs years ago- I have a custom Reynolds 953 and a Ti frame both equipped with Rohloff hubs. The Ti frame is a Jones and despite no suspension, is the most comfortable bike I've ridden.
Atma-Sphere, I have this nagging itch that tells me it is the "less money"
part that is most significant here.
@mijostyn  That might be due to Veblen Effect- the same reason that people preferred Campagnolo derailleurs back in the 1970s even though SunTour derailleurs were better in every way. Its that nagging itch that tells you that because its more expensive, it has to have more value. It doesn't always work that way- if the product is built to a pricing formula rather than what the market will bear, it is often less expensive.


The Technics machines are less expensive out of volume. You might want to give them another listen; the new 'tables are entirely different designs even though they've retained the same look. I've installed Triplanar arms on a number of them- that combination is very hard to beat!
 The torque of a direct drive motor is now superfluous. A quiet environment is far more critical. You have to isolate the platter, tonearm and cartridge from everything. IMHO this is far more difficult than cutting a lacquer.
Since I've had to set up a mastering operation from scratch I cannot disagree with this more. A lathe has to be isolated too. My setup is pretty old- a Scully- and yet it has a table equipped with adjustable points for feet, plus an isolation base, both made at the same time as the lathe, which was the early 1950s (so if anyone tries to tell you that points beneath your equipment is snake oil, you now have proof that the industry thinks it is not). All the stuff you have to do standing on your head to make it work and not freak out if you look at it cross-eyed is ridiculous. Cutting pressure, track ball height, stylus temperature, tangential-ness, bearing noise (the bearings need frequent greasing and should be warmed up for 20 minutes before making a cut), controlling cutter resonance... I can go on; not to belittle your comment but really its pretty amazing that the technology (record and playback) is as good as it is!

Atmasphere, in some cases it might be because they work better:)
We've made a belt-drive machine for over 20 years. I'd put it up beside any belt-drive made and no worries expecting it to keep up; you can walk up to this machine and thwock the platter while its playing and not hear anything significant through the speakers; the platter is damped, the plinth is rigid and dead, it has a powerful drive and the motor itself is a significant flywheel. Its very neutral. But I think Technics makes a better turntable (and for less money, but I'm not a fan of their arm) so we're not making our 'table anymore...unless someone begs us :)
why is it that the vast majority of the most high-end turntables are belt drive?
Its low-tech and easy to get good results?