Ivor Teifenbrun's Linn HiFI Hierarchy is still begin debated 50 years on. The founder of Linn developed the marketing gimmick that the turntable was the most important part of a sound system, followed by the arm, then cartridge, electronics, with teh speakers being the least important. Why? Because he owned a machine shop and turntables were the only audio component he could build. I bought into this for a brief period when I decided to upgrade from a Dual turntable with Ortofon cartridge to a Linn Axis table with Linn Basik arm, using the same cartridge. The change made NO difference whatsoever. I had tapes (yes, casette tapes) made from the Dual, that I played alongside the new Linn, so definitely no difference. I took my new rig to my friend's house who had a Dual table with a much nicer cartridge (Goldring, I think), and it smoked my table - more natural, more detailed, more spacious. So no, the table isn't always more important than the cartridge. This is not to say the table is never the limiting factor, I'm sure it can be, and I'm sure given a balanced system, table improvements can make a significant difference. But the idea that once you have a reasonable cartridge, the biggest improvements will come from table upgrades until you've spent big money on the table seems nonsensical.
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.