Help my analog sound as good as my streaming

@coys21, you mention a limited budget, perhaps instead of spreading the cash between vinyl and digital just choose one and run with that. If you choose vinyl then digital can always be added later, or the other way round.

At a recent audio show I noticed there were more demos done with digital than vinyl! The top digital rooms I heard were deeply satisfying.

If you go with vinyl then before you upgrade your cartridge rather upgrade TT and arm first. This will sound better with your existing cartridge than your present TT with the most expensive cartridge.

I can ’see’ lots of raised eyebrows at this comment. Explanation. Lets give the cartridge an easy task. Lets ask it to track a 10000Hz sine wave. Easy enough, all the stylus has to do is change direction 20000 times in one second. Now imagine what torture it must go through to play music! To transduce this micro info the cartridge effectively needs to be held immovable above the undulating grooves by the arm/TT combo whilst at the same time moving across the record. This arm also needs a split-personality. A: It must appear to be infinitely massive within the audio spectrum to extract the tiniest of info,  B: while also appearing to be massless below the spectrum so that it does not transduce record warp.

It takes expensively manufactured spindle bearings and finely engineered arms to allow the cartridge to do it’s job. The take away from this is to ignore the recommendations to upgrade to an expensive cartridge. In fact a low compliance MC cart. would just shake the arm and TT bearings defeating any chance at improvement and would sound worse. The delicate info would be lost. Sad but true.

I gave up vinyl 40 years ago due to circumstances and now use digital only.

”Learn to recognize and appreciate what your analog rig is doing. Because I assure you, it already sounds leagues better than streaming.”

Miller”trust your ears”carbon has finally lost the plot entirely. 

I should have also mentioned that once you have a very good TT and arm then upgrading the cartridge would now make sense and you will be able to hear what different ones bring to the party.

Room acoustics play a very big part and must be considered. Treating the room has a larger effect than most realise. I strongly encourage you to include some treatment, that is if you haven't already. 

I agree but what is the cost of a very good TT/arm and what are the brands that you would consider good? I have $ 15K in my TT and arm and I think I am at a very high, but not extravagant, level.