So, my NAS Hyperspace w. MP500 gets beaten by Iphone and TV


I have a Notthingham Hyperspace. One of the very old models without the "heavy platter" mod. I recently fitted it with a Nagaoka MP500 pick up.

I decided to run a test against my Iphone with the Youtube app installed which i casted through Chromecast to my plasma (so 2000's) TV which is connected to my preamp through a cheap 0,00001 inch interconnect. You know the red and white thingies that comes with consumer products.

Record on, drop needle and start comparison.

Oh well...

What i realised is that my 5-6.000$ turntable setup doesnt really nail the high end Iphone/Chromecast/Plasma combo to the ground in direct comparison. There isnt really much of a difference to my ears.

I spend the whole day tweaking with protractors, VTA, VTF and this and that for no apparent outcome or change in conclusion. Still no real remarkable difference.

Now, I may be deaf (dumb and blind) and in that case there isnt any reason to have anything else but a simple streaming setup.

Digital is all new to me and id like to consider my options. Id like to own my music, so I guess I will be downloading and not streaming.

Is the common setup today a harddrive connected to a media player connected to preamp or?
holberg19
Here's what I don't like about streaming: no way to verify the provenance of the recording! No way to tell how close it is to the original master! You are at the mercy of the online provider! It's anybody's guess as to exactly what generation you are hearing when you stream! Not for me! I prefer a nice hold-in-my-hand physical object that I know where it came from and how it was made!
And phono stages (both internal and external) vary widely in sound quality due to  different equalization circuits, power supplies ...
The typical mm cartridge has a coil inductance measured in the hundreds of millihenries. Mc cartridges have 1/10 that or less! Plus much lower internal resistance. 
There ain't no magic in using a moving magnet cartridge! They all suffer from excessive inductance (coils) and consequently slowed down transients! 
You can connect hard drives or flash drives to media players, some come with internal hard drives as well,  some people use a NAS(Network Attached Storage) and stream from that. You can then attach the streamer to the preamp. If your preamp doesn't have a DAC you'll need that some streamers have one built in some don't you'll need to check that as well.