Turntable got absolutely crushed by CD

Yes, the OP is far from starter; he's so close, all he needs is some professional help that will steer him into the necessary changes.

Dear @chadsort: How many LP's do you own? Thank's in advance.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

Hi @rauliruegas Not too many..at this point i have a little over 50 LPs. Couple of digital reissues, but I do have some early pressings of records from Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits etc...your usual classic rock stuff

@prof + 1

Very similar to my story, but at least 'Prof' was smart enough to keep his vinyl records. I was so stupid to fall for the 'perfect sound' hype and sold my records around 1988 and entirely switched to cd's. With hindsight it wasn't just cognitive dissonance, because cd's really did sound better to me at the time. My Japanese mid-fi DD turntable + Denon DL-160 cartridge was - to use the OP's phrase - crushed by a Nakamichi OMS-3 cd player.

Fast forward some 10 years when I first heard a top level analog rig and couldn't believe what I heard. This epiphany opened the flood gates and I jumped back into vinyl with a Clearaudio Master Solution + Unify arm + vdHul Frog MC into a Krell KRC HR preamp with Reference phono board. Not exactly top level, but still good enough to ignite an obsessive period of vinyl collecting, mostly classical and jazz record in original pressings of the '50's and '60's. The Krell KPS-20i cd player I had at the time was on 'stand by' most of the time.

Fast forward another 15 years (with the record collection more or less hitting saturation point) I started going down the rabbit hole of analog upgrading, acquiring various turntables, tonearms and cartridges as well as really getting into VTA, azimuth, SRA, etc. I soon discovered how much further there was still to go, despite my aging ears (I'm 58 now).

Comparing digital to analog is apples & oranges, but to me it seems there's a definite performance plateau for digital, while analog seems infinite. No matter how much you rotate those digits, it's still 16bit. If anything, the latest generation cd players that I have heard sound more manipulated and processed than earlier ones (like that Krell I fondly remember), despite the higher 'resolution'. I briefly owned an Esoteric K-05x, which to my ears falls into that category.

So if you are accustomed to that 'processed' sound, I can imagine you feel it 'crushes' your vinyl rig. But you have to realize that the DL-103 is a rather crude device that sets you on the wrong foot about what vinyl can do. So please don't give up. Start with a better cartridge and get someone to install it properly. You won't know what hits you. No, actually you will. Instantly.

Many thanks for all the advice and constructive feedback so far. I'm most likely going to hold on to the turntable for a while and see how much more performance i can extract from further tweaking. 

I'm facing quite a learning curve on the VPI tonearm though. I noticed that the entire tonearm can be rotated laterally, with 2 points where the tonearm seems to snap or click into place. Is this normal? If so, how do I know at which point the tonearm should snap into place?

Also, how fragile is the unipivot male bearing assembly and should I be applying any sort of lubricant/fluid? There is a section on damping fluid around the pivot in the VPI manual.

How about anti-skating? I know the general consensus seems to be a no for VPI arms.

Apologies, I realise I must sound really stupid right now.