Surprised at how turntable sounds

When I wanted a brand new turntable to add to my collection of a dozen I bought a Pioneer PLX1000 - $699 from Sweetwater. I added a Denon 103R lomc cartridge ($350). What influenced me was Herb Reichert's positive review in Stereophile. Add that to the fact that the Pioneer was half the price of a comparable Technics direct drive. I already had a secondhand Technics 1200. I am happy with the build quality and sound of the Pioneer/Denon 103R.

Oh yes, Herb likes the sound of the Denon 103's! I agree and find them competitive with mc cartridges costing several times their price!

At $1k, I would add a +1 for the Rega Planar 3. In order of importance, the turntable itself is most important in terms of sound quality, then the tonearm, and finally the cartridge. The turntable matters most since it is providing a solid foundation on which the other components are working.

Hi! I’ve went down this same rabbit hole and made these same mistakes recently. Let me save you some trouble. Buy a waxwing phono and bypass the built in phono on the record player you have. When you are ready to upgrade your turntable, just buy a technics 1200 mk2 or if you can, get the new one the 1200 gr with a ortofon 2m blue cartridge. Trust me.

Hi Martin. I’d say ditch the cartridge for sure but the Denon whilst not by most standards the last word in vinyl playback, is nevertheless capable of giving you the flavour of decent vinyl playback with the MP-150 properly fitted to a the arm. Unfortunately, unless you can find a switch which bypasses the line level out, you cannot use an off board Phono preamp. So I would pay a bit more for a Nagoaka MP150 cartridge which should give you a flavour of what vinyl can sound like. You may then want to move up a little. If you then decide you want to try a better turntable,the Nagaoka MP150 will scale with it. There are plenty of choices  Technics SL-100C; Rega Planar 3; Pro-Ject X1;  Thorens TD-160 to name a few, or why not look for a decent used used Technics SL-1200 Mk2 bullet proof and great sounding. Of course with these TT’s, you will need to factor a Phono pre Look for something like Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 SE, which I have personally heard work so well with a Nagaoka MP150 and Rega Planar 3 but Schiit Mani 2 is good value too, as is Project Phono-box S2. Even the Rega Fono Mini will work well. A little perseverance will be yield a great deal of pleasure. If not too presumptuous please consider a preamp/control for your system It will be a huge upgrade or even a streamer with a preamp built in with some line level inputs. I am unsure of how the Sonos other than multi-room functionality and NAS connectivity fits into what is a capable system. Which ever way you go I wish you a good outcome.