Ortofon Red/Pro-ject Carbon Debut combination; rolled off hi-frequencies. Solutions?

Your Ortofon 2M Red is the problem! It’s mediocre cartridge, what else do you expect on such cheap turntable? One of my friend has replaced his 2M (on the same turntable) with Stanton 881 MKIIs and he never looked back since that day.

Find yourself a better MM cartridge and stay away from the modern MM cartridges, buy the best MM from the 80s or 70s. Then you will undergstand why they are so good and why it was a choice for disc mastering engineers over the years. You will not find anything better than AT-ML170 VM OFC or OCC and btw Stanton 881 MKIIs is also great, read this article first.

Another great high compliance Audio-Technica cartridge is AT20SLa (it’s my link, but there you can read some info i just don’t want to copy paste here).

What else you can do to improve the sound quality ?
Change load resistors inside your phono stage to 100k Ohms (Vishay Naked Foil resistors available on ebay from texas components - this is the nanufacturer). You will get a better top end compared to 47k Ohm.

You can not make a mediocre cartridge sounds good by changing the cables or mat or anything, except the cartridge itself if you really looking for something better. Everything starts from the cartridge.

But load resistance is important for MM. 

@morbius2130aol

The capacitance of the inboard phono stage of the A3.2 is non adjustable and fixed at 47k Ohms.

This is load resistance set at 47k Ohm, but you can change it by replacing restistors if you want to upgrade for very little cost (of the actual vishay 100k Ohm resistors). It’s a big upgrade for ANY MM phono stage.

The capacitance set up by cables. I hope your setting is not totally off. You can play with everything like VTA, MAT, Capasistance, Tracking force, but i bet you will not hear any difference in a mediocre system. The more inportant is the cartridge!

Change the cartridge and you will change everything. If you don’t like the sound of your cartridge then it’s not "your cartridge". I don’t like 2M series of Ortofon carts, but some people like them for some reason. But do not buy another mediocre cheap modern mm cartridge, buy something good and much better. This is how it works. Cartridges are very different. When it comes to MM cartridges it is worth to read this thread. The favorite cartridges for many are not the today’s made MM, but those great MM from the old days of analog (70s/80s).

People who claims they are able to hear 0,15g difference in tracking force or a minor difference in mats on this particular turntable must have a "golder ears". I do not belongs to the people with "golden ears" (probably), but i have a dosen of vintage MM cartridges and they are making a huge difference in any system, even in the cheapest system with average headphones or in high-end system. Cartridge is the most important.

This Ortofon is easy to sell used, you will find a better cartridge for sure. 

It's funny how many useless things people are ready to do, before they are realizing the weak point is the cartridge. 

I've been experimenting with about 20 cartridges on average turntable like SL1200mkII (not my reference turntable) with relatively cheap phono stage. A good cartridge is ALWAYS better than average cartridge on stock turntable without any tweks with cables, footers, fancy headshells, mats, clamps etc. This is a nature of the cartridge - the only component that actually touch the vinyl media.   

You can not compensate the weak point of the cartridge by cable, footers, mat, clapm etc. You can slightly improve the details and clarity, but a better cartridge will be better without all that tweks on your stock turntable. I've noticed than many times. 

The tweaks are ok AFTER you got the right cartrige for yourself (for your ears, not for the ears of reviewer online).  

@morbius2130aol

My next step is to swap out the cartridge with a conservatively priced (less than $350) unit, based on what I hear (and don’t hear) then fine tune the system with a complimentary cable upgrade and probably an outboard phono preamp down the road.

Right, within your budget (or very close) i would strongly recommend a high compliance Audio-Technica AT-20SLa with genuine 20SL Nude Shibata Stylus (not a bootleg from LPgear). Simply search on audiogon and you will find more about this great MM cartridge from the golden age of Moving Magnets. This cartridge has so many followers here on audiogon. Another cartridge in this price is probably Grace F9E, but the AT20SLa (Shibata) is much better than Elliptical F9E.

@mattmiller Stanton 881s MKII was a choice of Doug Sax (RIP) if you know who it is and if you don’t know look at Sheffield Lab studio gear. This is his master disc monitoring cartridge for years. Doug Sax did the greatest Direct Cut recordings of all time. This cartridge cost under $250 today (used) or even cheaper if you’re lucky to find one in the USA. I’m not gonna say it’s the best MM cartridge, because there are better Stanton cartridges out there like the signature SC-100 WOS or 981 series, but the Stanton is clearly better than 2M Red and the price for that Stanton is pretty low. Here is the article about 3 top carts used by the greatest mastering engineers from the golden age of vinyl, those carts are Technics 100c MK4, Audio-Technica AT-ML170 and Stanton 881s MKII.

I hope you’re not trying to say that modern Ortofon MM cartridges are better?
Unfortunately Ortofon M20FL SUPER is no longer available - that was a good one with Fine Line stylus.

Not sure how many cartridge have you tried, but i have tried many of them and still trying/looking for something that can surpass the vintage MM, but i can not find anything that comes even close to some of my favorite MM carts, they are all from the 80s, but i was born in the 70s and i have not tried those carts until now.

In my system i use at the moment: AT-ML180 OCC, Grace F-14 LC-OFC, Grace LEVEL II MR/MR and Stanton CS-100 WOS ... and many others... they are all superior to the 881 MKII for sure, but the price for those carts are 3-5 times as much and they are easily competes (on the right tonearms) with 3-4k MC cartridges.

BTW I owned Dynaudio Contour 1.1 (bookshelf) with powerfull Dynaudio SUB-300. Dynaudio is definitely not my type of sound! Sold them long time ago.

I find my nirvana with super high efficient (101db) Zu Audio Druid MKV full range speakers instead (no crossover). It’s completely different sound and that’s why the source (aka cartridge) is important for me. I also drive them with new tube amp, so i’m not the one who stick to the old gear, except for the cartridges and turntables.