Help me decide on my next cartridge (

I think you're probably better off selling the TT and putting your proceeds and additional funds towards a better table.  In my view it's your weakest link in the chain, not the cartridge.

I'm with three_easy_payments here 

your table is $500-$600 new, a $900 cart is not going to make that much difference. If your cart is done/wore out then yes by all means buy a new cart and upgrade. when you do think about your next table-arm and make sure your new cart will work compliance wise with your upgrade path. At lease that way you have a cart you can upgrade with. also better carts are worth rebuilding so that's something to consider. 

One member here mentioned to buy a NOS cart, i'm sceptical of that due to the suspension systems degradation over time. NOS carts should be bought with the understanding they may need a rebuild. heck any used cart for that mater. 

If you don't have a MC phono section in your parasound that's something else to think about as well.  

SHURE ULTRA 500 sounds good everywhere, quote from cart expert David (dlaloum) I couldn´t agree more. You won´t be disappointed, + new HQ replacement styli available from JICO Japan.
SHURE ULTRA 400, 2nd best from SHURE. Both for ridiculous prices, not so easy to find though.

But firstly, you need a better TT, I highly recommend ORACLE DELPHI MKII because it´s simply musical.

Good luck !

I’m entirely in agreement with this:

I think you’re probably better off selling the TT and putting your proceeds and additional funds towards a better table. In my view it’s your weakest link in the chain, not the cartridge.

The Debut Carbon Esprit is a fine choice for an entry level turntable, but sticking a $900 cartridge on it is decidedly overkill. If you’re sticking with it, my choice would be either an Audio Technica AT540ML or Nagaoka MP-150 on the lower end of the price scale, or an AT-150Sa or MP-200 on the high side.

The latter two at $400 is about as high as I’d go on a Debut Carbon Esprit. Which isn’t as damning as it may sound, as I own an AT150Sa myself and consider it one of the finest MM cartridges I’ve ever heard.

clipdin says:

I don’t know what I’m missing by moving up.
I would appreciate any and all suggestions.

Quite so. And nobody here helping with that either. Oh well. This will help.

Whether turntable, cartridge, or arm, what you're missing and what you will get when moving up is refinement. That's mainly what you will notice as you move up from your budget/entry level setup. Dynamics, extension and detail improve as well. But mostly its refinement. Which if you stop to think about it, detail is more refined, dynamics more refined, extension at both ends, ditto. 

That's the big picture. Zoom in and you will see the three main components- table, arm, and cartridge- each contributes to this in its own way.

The cartridge generates the signal. With a better cartridge you should easily hear big improvements in dynamics, detail, and extension. Cymbals and guitars sound more like cymbals and guitars. 

But all the cartridge does is wiggle. If the arm also wiggles, which being attached to a vibrating cartridge it is bound to do, then together all that wiggling is gonna blur and confuse the sound. So a good arm is equally as important as the cartridge you mount on it.

The turntable only has to be stable. That's all. Stable at 33 1/3, stable in spite of spinning, stable in spite of the wiggly cartridge and arm vibrating like hell all the time. If the speed isn't stable you don't hear pitch changing. None of them are that bad. What happens instead is big dynamics like bass, the extra drag of the groove oscillating actually slows the platter just enough to rob the music of its drive and immediacy. A cheap table actually sucks the life out of the music. 

A noisy table, you never hear the noise. Rumble, only time you are gonna hear rumble is a 20 year old Technics with a dry bearing. Instead what happens is the very slight rumble that is way too low to be heard is nevertheless not too low to obscure the faint micro-details that are what make the hairs on your neck stand up when you get the eerie feeling of the singer actually being there between the speakers.

So now you take all that and apply it to your situation. If what you want is something quick and easy that will make a big obvious improvement then forget Rule #1 which is a stupid rule anyway and get the best cartridge you can afford. You will be happy. Believe me. Very, very happy.

Anything other than that and it will help to start thinking a lot more long term. You might for example get the best turntable you can afford and use it with a cheaper arm and cartridge for the time being. Even the cheapest arm/cartridge on a really good table is going to sound great. But it will be a different sort of great from the cheap table better cartridge sound. If you have a nice quiet room where you are able to sit and focus and enjoy listening deep into recordings then you will probably prefer this. Because the better table will reveal a wealth of previously unimagined hidden detail. But if you are up and around or your room isn't very quiet then this will be harder to appreciate and you might prefer the more easily heard changes you'll get with a new cartridge.

You know why they say your mileage may vary? Because it varies.