Largest Impact - Arm or Cart?

your 'encounter' is an excellent arm, and a bargain given the money it would take just to hear an ever-so-slight improvement. for 1k however, there are lots of cartridges that will shake up your system in a bigger way.....sometimes blowing the money on new music will make the need to change components go away.

I agree with Jaybo. You already have a $2,000 arm, and Origins are generally considered over-achievers anyway. If you have $1K you *must* spend, I'd say get a nice cartridge. You wouldn't be stretching beyond the Encounter's capabilities by any means.

But if you want to make big tonearm improvements, save your money until you can get a Graham Phantom.

Assuming you sell the M2 (retails around $1300) for $500 and add the pocket burning $1000, you're basically back to the cost of the M2.

Contrary to the other recommendations, you'll need to drop over $1500 plus the proceeds of the M2 to make a significant upgrade which would be the likes of a Zyx Airy 2, Zyx Airy 3, Sumiko Celebration, Lyra Helikon, etc.

The Encounter is hardly an overachiever and sells for $1600+ not $2000.

Check out this thread, in support of the validity of following the turntable upgrade hierarchy ('table, then arm, then cartridge):

Palasr, Salectric, and Doug Deacon were commenting on how good the Denon DL 103R is in the context of riding on a good turntable / tonearm. I think this is worth reviewing.

The relevant comments start at post #31:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1171736594&openfrom&31&4#31

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

The arm + cart form a SYSTEM. The most important aspect is how the arm and the cartridge work together. Price is not necessarily the best way to approach this conundrum, either.