Help my analog sound as good as my streaming

What rocks your world in digital will never be found in Analog.
You are that type of listener.

Go for the cartridge! I have a Project EVO carbon 10. I now use a Sound Smith cartridge. Had the Grace F9e. They are similar in design. Peter worked with Sumiko/Ortofon to help them develop phono cartridges years ago. Find one in your budget. You will be amazed. You do not need to change to DD turntable. Each type has its advantages.
Couple of things though:
lt’s Really important to coordinate the compliance of the arm with the compliance of the phono cartridge! On their site, Ortofon has a little program that will help you with that. Input the compliances’ to find the resonance of the two components. if you’re OCD find the formula to actually calculate that. You can find the Exact residence for two.
Secondly, The rake angle and VTF must be ‘perfect’. Make adjustments by SQ after checking with instruments. I have found that using playing cards to adjust the rake angle works very well. Even the thickness of a single playing card will make a difference. Experiment! Check out the videos on these topics on Sound Smith on YouTube. Peter is very knowledgeable and willing to share what he knows.
Almost everybody here says that for the same amount of money, analog sounds better. honestly I don’t know because I don’t stream. It’s the people here that have said that, not me.
Play analog!
Michael Lent

There must be something about vinyl and I missed it.  I had a Technique turntable back in the 70's and purchased a $300 cartridge.  When I started buying $30 master recorded vinyl, I could really hear the difference.  However, getting off the sofa, having to wash the record took a lot of time.  I just isn't as convenient.  However, I saw a $20,000 turn table at the RMAF that was lit by a small spot light and it was just beautiful.  However, how many have $20,000 to spend on just a turn table.  It still was beautiful no matter how you cut it.

You should be able to get analog to sound better than streaming very easily. I think that a modest investment in analog pays much bigger dividends than the same investment in digital. Do not buy an inexpensive direct drive turntable rather go with a cheaper belt drive. Mapman is correct the Denon 103 is a very good cartridge for the money. In fact I can think of none better at the retail price. All things equal digital isnt even close!

Some people know nothing about high-end Direct Drive turntables and just demonstrate a lack of knowledge in every post about them on this forum. Every lacquer discs master cut on direct drive, constant speed and stable rotation forever - this is what Direct Drive is all about. Technics is only one of many, but some forever gone. This turntable will serve you 30+ years without service. You’d better ask people who own many turntables, many people on this forum are too old and if they missed something in their life it’s too late to try, most of them still don’t know that Technics made DD motor for Neumann cutting lathe (used to make all their records), and designed reference Direct Drive to reproduce those records at home (search for SP10 mk3 or new SP10R if you want to know more about reference class). Cheap belt drive turntables is a joke, manufacturers of those BD toys are so small, so it’s a toy factory compared to Matsushita (Technics/National/Panasonic), their stuff is afordable only because they are making millions of turntables keeping the price low (not high) without compromise in quality, those are Made in Japan if you know what does it mean today.