Sota Sapphire with or without vacuum?

I had a SOTA sapphire and upgraded to a Cosmos so I cannot give you an exact comparison.

I enjoyed my stock (series I) sapphire immensely. Decided to treat myself and bought a Cosmos and had SOTA make it a series IV. The Cosmos gives music a deeper blacker
background to spring from. The music opens up a little more and listening is more enjoyable. It is a "definite" improvement over the sapphire. Having said that, I could still live with a sapphire. I suspect that upgrading it with the vacuum would make the gap smaller between a sapphire and Cosmos.

Having owned both non-vac and vac. I highly recommend going the vacuum route.

Have Fun!

I've owned one Sapphire w/o vac, one w/ vac, and now have a new NOVA w/vac. To my ears vac produces greater detail throughout, especially with base tones. I've not noticed the dullness Dusty wrote of but agree about the enhanced detail and absence of resonance. For me the vac sounds nice and "black". Although I upgraded arm, cart,+ phono stage at each change I believe I can still say that I prefer the vac. I would not do otherwise at this point.

I agree with above, Ive owned the whole line and currently have a cosmos IV. Ive also owned tables with periphery rings. I prefer the vacuum to any other system. I have never noticed any "dullness" but I have noticed the highs are rich and clean in comparison to other tables.

By "dullness" I meant that the reduction in higher frequency resonances seems to make the highs less prominent when using the vacuum. A quick A/B would indicate that without vacuum you get more "highs" but that really isn't the case.
The vacuum is better.

I'm running a Star Sapphire w/ vacuum - I've never tried it without the vacuum, but in general it has very deep bass, lots of clarity and a very smooth top. It sounds great!