Have you ever cleaned your stylus or checked it under magnification? Unless you had a regular routine of effectively cleaning it, the stylus is probably caked with gunk and fuzz. When I got back into vinyl 4 yrs ago, my new cartridge went from sounding good to muffled in just a month or two. Viewing the stylus under a magnifier, all I saw was a big, black amorphous, fuzz-laced blob. Several applications of a dry Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (stroked from back to front, brushing off the abrasive flakes each time) finally cleared off the gunk and enabled me to see the bare stylus again. The sound of course improved markedly.
Which receiver for better sound with vinyl?
I have an old stereo system from the '70's: Nikko NR-515 stereo tuner/amp, Marantz TT 1060 turntable. I also just put together a new home theatre setup: big Samsung plasma TV, Denon 1910 avr receiver, and Jamo 606 5.1 speaker system with Jamo 250 sub. I'm trying to figure out if I'll get better sound for music (vinyl) with a phono preamp and hooking up my tt to my new denon receiver, or keeping the two systems separate. If I keep them separate and continue using my old stereo receiver with the tt, could I hook it up to my new Jamo speakers, since they have two sets of speaker clips on each speaker to permit bi-amping? Would my Jamo speakers likely sound good with vinyl? Obviously, I would only use one input at a time!