Upgrade from TW Acustic Raven AC-3 to what?

The Black Night does not use a teflon trust plate, but considering the 1-2 gm force of stylus I don't get the sponginess of an teflon trust pad once compressed. I wouldn't understand it w. an air bearing as well. The only issue w. an air bearing would be the variations in pressure etc which I have no experience with.

Black Night compared to Raven AC? It is more open on top and yet has much the same character in sound. Difficult to explain, you need to hear it. It is earily silent. But shortcomings that were missing on the AC in the vinyl chain are apparent w. the BN.

The easiest way to compare the 2 is to say where the best SACD releases was close to Vinyl w. the AC, on the BN I need to start from scratch. Kind of upsetting as I wish digital w. all its convenience has a prayer. SACD is close, very - but then go listen to the AC. You will be shocked. Then listen to the BN and the shock leads to disappointment in digital. But... Real to Real is still the best I have heard. And that is an even bigger step up. Just not for me.

Alectiong,

To get the wall to wall imaging I would suggest as follows: listen to a CD and compare the Vinyl on your TT. Then go back and forth to remember placement positioning etc. Then adjust Anti Skate/Azimuth etc. until the 2 coincide. I have learned to do Anti Skate by ear and once it locks in place the imaging is scary.

As for the Mid Bass bloat, that sounds like a resonance problem. It will also smear the highs and darken the sound. You need to sort out where the resonance is coming from. No matter how good a turntable if you don't have it isolated and maybe have it located in a room node etc you will not get near 50% of what the TT / Front end is capable of. Again I suggest you go back & forth between a well recorded CD/SACD and compare with LP for bass output etc and determine if it is really the turntable or the setup or the tonearm/cartridge or just something elsewhere in your chain. I have listened to some friends very good Analogue front ends where they were lacking one thing or another. They would never believe me until I put in a CD of the same and it was that apparent. Then we would redo the tonearm setup and got most of the way there. What I couldn't do is compensate for the Phono stage which didn't have enough gain. By the way the phono stage can be a big part of the darkness as well (although, I do agree the Raven AC table is slightly warm in comparison to the Black Night - from which I get a bit more detail, and more definition (and hear more problems in my setup - some cartridges just don't cut it anymore). I have had phono stage mismatches with cartridges which would have you condemn a cartridge that in a different system would be excellent. Same for Speaker/Amp combinations. Hope this helps as a turntable upgrade doesn't sound like the solution.