Dream/upgrade list: rogue ares

Phono stage is pretty important, so you may be able to hear more with an Ares right now. Having owned the Ares a few times now over the years, including the Magnum, my sense it that it’s a good stage that will hit its stride with a table in the 3K / 4K range (e.g. SOTA Sapphire, VPI Scoutmaster / Aries, etc) and a good MC cartridge in the > 0.5mV output range, e.g. Ortofon Cadenza Red / Blue / Bronze. Beyond that, exploration of even better phono stages would be fruitful. In fact, I was way "over serving" my Ares Magnum a couple years ago with Koetsu, etc. The noise floor of these Rogue units will being to work against the lowest output MC cartridges, so I recommend sticking with 0.45 mV and higher output levels there.

The main weakness in the non-Magnum Ares was the red-label CineMag 3440A SUT (I feel it’s a poor performer) in the box, which could be bypassed by running in MM mode with your own outboard SUT (many to choose from). The Magnum version fixed this with a much better blue-label SUT built in.

You should also keep an eye out for the older Sonic Frontiers Phono 1 SE stages, which are excellent sounding units with MC cartridges in the 0.5mv - 1.0 mV range.

Wow...I think this might have to stay on my dream list. Thank you for the detailed response 

I don't know the U-Turn, but in good shape (referring mainly to the condition of its springs) your PL-600 is an excellent turntable and worthy of a much better phono stage than the Schiit Mani.  In other words I see no need to give up on the Rogue Ares. 

However, as mulveling notes and for the same reason, I would certainly get the Ares Magnum rather than the vanilla edition.  Or, if your Audio-Technica is also an MM, you can always add a good step-up later on if you decide to try an MC cartridge.