No cartridge is good enough.

In my opinion a cartridge does not "extract" music from the groove, but instead interprets the music from the groove. I view them as musical instruments that impart their own subtle flavor to the music.

The trick is to find the flavor you like.

I know there a lot of vinyl lovers here, but this conversation is like discussing how best to optimize the steam engine with the latest carbon fiber technology.

Yes, we could take miniature video cameras and photograph undulations in the grooves, then use image recognition software to regenerate the waveform. But why? Every modern technique used today (including the laser) has to go through a digital front end process, and if you are going to do that, go back to the original analog master tapes and find a way to digitally distribute the basic music with minimal loss. Throw away redbook specs and go 24bit/196K or whatever and I bet even 99% of audiophiles will not hear the difference.

There is another reason for optical scanning of older analog audio media- ancient discs, cylinders and other antediluvian media that are so fragile as to be damaged in the process of playback. Look up IRENE, Lawrence Berkeley labs. One was used recently to extract the information from some old Edison talking dolls; the dolls had a habit of self-destructing their little spools on playback. Some articles published on this too. I got to see IRENE on my visit to Culpeper, Va.last year, including the print out, but did not listen to the audio output.
As for the rest, whatever floats your boat....

^^ Vinyl is forecast by the Library of Congress to last 2-2 centuries if stored properly. I have LPs that are already 60 years old and they play fine.

It is an amazing technology that has overachieved and managed to hang around for a long time. But it ain't getting any better than possible already today, except perhaps for those few willing to devote major chunks of time money and effort in their home to try and make it better.

About that you would be incorrect. There have been a number of advances made in LP recording technology in recent years. One of them that stands out occurred at QRP (Quality Record Pressing, the pressing plant created by Acoustic Sounds). Their pressing machines do not vibrate as the vinyl is cooling within, resulting in vastly quieter surfaces. You may not know this, but the lacquer that is cut on the mastering lathe is so quiet that no known phono preamp system has a lower noise floor- in fact the noise floor of a lathe cut easily rivals Redbook.

When we have done projects through QRP the LPs we got back seemed nearly as quiet as our lathe cuts. IMO that is significant progress. Add that to the fact that all LP reproducers have greater bandwidth than digital- that BTW is a little-known fact about LP.

Finally, we have been doing cuts using our OTL amplifiers, in essence creating the world's first transformerless vacuum tube mastering system. The advantage here has to do with the fact that all mastering amplifiers make about 10x more power than the cutterhead could ever manage without burning up. As a result due to the fact that the mastering amps are push-pull, at a certain lower power level (somewhere between 2-5% with all push-pull amps) the distortion level of the amp starts to climb as power is decreased towards zero.

This means that most LP mastering occurs within that 'distortion window' of the mastering amplifier!

It happens that our amps have a distortion character where the distortion linearly decreases to unmeasurable as the power is decreased, similar to an SET (which is part of SET popularity BTW). The result is we can make a lower distortion cut, which is the same as saying we can put more detail in the grooves.

It ain't over till its over...

Speakers 'interpret' music. Cartridge is a 'stupid thing' told to extract everything there is to extract.