No experience with your gear, except the ART 9. Fantastic value cart(for the 1k price point) with my tubed phono amp.
The Simaudio gears appears to be quality SS gear. Likely, the onboard phono stage delivers a good amount of their stand lone unit. Advantage being one less box and cables.
With that in mind, the value you put on the possibly minor/subtle improvement becomes the issue. Note I prefaced minor/subtle with possibly. Someone may chime in with experience with similar gear and actual results.
I found going from a SS phono to tubed the game changer. If you read reviews of high dollar SS units, its often mentioned how it sounds tubed. You put up with a little noise for "real" over a decent SS unit. In my case, I need to crank the volume up to 12:00 o'clock to hear hiss, and I just don't do that
The Simaudio gears appears to be quality SS gear. Likely, the onboard phono stage delivers a good amount of their stand lone unit. Advantage being one less box and cables.
With that in mind, the value you put on the possibly minor/subtle improvement becomes the issue. Note I prefaced minor/subtle with possibly. Someone may chime in with experience with similar gear and actual results.
I found going from a SS phono to tubed the game changer. If you read reviews of high dollar SS units, its often mentioned how it sounds tubed. You put up with a little noise for "real" over a decent SS unit. In my case, I need to crank the volume up to 12:00 o'clock to hear hiss, and I just don't do that