Analogue front end. You want more weight, scale and dynamics.Where do you start upgrading?

I have Boston Audio graphite mat on my Nottingham Spacedeck, and the difference with original felt mat is quite big.

This thread is not about my set up. I my case, I would have to upgrade the table first and then the rest, so it's good enough for now.

@inna Is it for someone else (emphasis added)?

I read the paper at the Boston Audio site. IMO there was some stuff in it that didn't seem to add up. In particular they mentioned something about overdamping, causing the sound to be 'bland, lifeless sound'. 

You can't overdamp the LP. You can very easily damp certain frequencies while others are damped less. That results in tonal aberrations and leads to the myth that the LP was somehow 'overdamped' which is impossible.

One way things often go awry is if the platter pad is a different durometer (hardness) than the LP. They must be the same otherwise some frequencies will be reflected back to the LP.

The article is critical of acrylic. The thing about acrylic is it can be too hard or too soft depending on how its made. It can also be just right. Hence my support of the Oracle product.

Now there is one other thing you might be able to look at. The platter itself should be damped. If you get it right you can walk up to the turntable and thwock the platter while its playing and not hear it in the speaker. If doing that results in a sound that means airborne bass notes are affecting it too. If teh bass isn't right nothing else is either.

There are materials that can be used to damp a platter. Each platter is different so its on a case by case basis. Technics bothers to damp the platter of their SL1200G (the old ones were not damped). We went through a bit of work damping the platter of our model 208. Since there was a good way to apply it, we were able to use a 3M damping compound called DP108 which is a 2 part epoxy that cures soft. It was very effective in our case but won't work in every application.

If you can really get the turntable and platter properly damped that's really where you start. To that end the turntable should be perched on a competent anti-vibration platform.

@inna You might try the platter pad. Many/most turntables don't have one that really does the job.

The job, in case its not clear, is to control resonance in the vinyl. To do that the pad has to be able to absorb energy at all frequencies (not just some) and to do that the most effectively it must be the same hardness as the LP.

Its really a good idea to damp the platter as well and a good platter pad can do that too. The difference in sound is exactly what you are asking for in your opening post.

Oracle makes a platter pad that does this job very well. Pads that don't work are made of cork, rubber, felt, carbon fiber and also raw platters made of metal. That's a lot of platter pads!

The thing is if the LP talks back to the cartridge you simply can't fix it anywhere downstream starting with the cartridge itself. So this has to be fixed first.