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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. 
tubelvr1

Showing 2 responses by inscrutable

inscrutable
312 posts
 
I meant to say “Unless” rather than “So” in the first sentence of last paragraph.
inscrutable
312 posts
 
Well, I think we’ve successfully run off the OP with brand bashing and endless direct vs belt supremacy debate ...

In case he/she still lurking from a safe distance, the problem is there simply is NO answer the way the question is framed. This is a SYSTEMS issue ... just like the entire audio chain, but let’s just focus on this source piece, which is comprised of 3 or 4 elements (depending if you count the phone pre) ... table, arm, cartridge, phono pre.
At some level of capability and refinement EVERY one of these can be the weak link, and upon upgrading, just shifts the weak link elsewhere.  It is silly to devote a drastically disproportionate share budget or quality so that you have one immensely good element that is then limited by 3 others. 
So if you are building to an ‘ultimate’ or ‘final’ source system one big upgrade to an element one at a time ... or make less dramatic (and expensive) upgrades to individual elements that aren't significantly ‘stranding capital’ for too long.

my $0.02 ...
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