No cartridge is good enough.


It appears that even the very best can't extract everything from the groove. Yes, along with table/arm.
Is there any way, theoretically speaking, to take cartridge design and execution to a much higher level?
What about laser instead of cartridge/arm? I know there was/is one company that tried. It didn't sound better and required cleaning records before each play. But laser could be improved. This approach didn't take off, it would seem.
inna
inna " ... Vinyl was never supposed to be an audiophile medium but tape was ..."

Atmasphere was correct on calling this claim as erroneous. The innovation of the LP was absolutely driven by the goal of high fidelity. Tape, at the time that Goldmark and CBS introduced the LP, was not a practical consumer format. Prior to the LP, consumers relied on its phonograph predecessor and had fidelity not been the goal, the LP would never have been brought to market.

When it was introduced, the long-playing record was hailed as the huge advance in high fidelity playback that it was. It was much higher fidelity than commercially available pre-recorded tapes, which were duplicated at high speeds. That's why they had such limited HF content.
To the original OP's question, I don't have direct experience on this matter, but I suspect that a Soundsmith strain gauge cartridge (http://www.sound-smith.com/cartridges/strain-gauge-systems/strain-gauge-systems) mounted on an air-driven linear tracking tonearm on a 6-figure turntable would get you about as close as you can get.
That's what we are trying to talk about - to get beyond that.
Besides, not everyone who can pay anything uses the Soundsmith or linear tracking tonearm.
Well, since my LP rig regularly transports me to the artists' performance, place, and time, I have little urge to mess with it at present. Live performances have greater varieties of non-linearities, ambient noise, room acoustics, energy of performance, etc., and they're the real deal. Variations in state of the art vinyl playback pale in comparison.
Live performances do vary a lot but they all have one thing in common - they sound real even if they sometimes sound like crap. Hi-Fi never quite sounds real even if it sometimes sounds great. 
So..it appears that no-one tried that optical cartridge or laser turntable. Or someone did try but doesn't want to post. I better ask Japanese.