Yes, you should get a significant improvement. I would definitely upgrade the table. I owned an Aries for many years. Moving up a couple levels in the table would be my first step… like the super scout. This gives you a more stable quieter base to make other changes. You have a pretty good cartridge.
The advantage of moving up the line with VPI is you like the sound… moving higher will improve all aspects of the sound you like. While there are lots of alternatives out there they are going to have a different character. So, if you like what you have and want to move up then your safest bet is to more up VPI with the same basic technology as far as you can. Getting in the $ 3 - $5 K range table gets you a substantial platform. Then you can look at cartridges later when you want.
You will get a lot of recommendations of other brands that are “much better”. They also may have a different character… which to you may find to be great or disconcerting. If you are inclined to investigate these other recommendations then critically read all the reviews of yours, the VPI you are thinking about buying and the others proposed. Successfully changing brands will require a lot of work to with low risk. There is nothing worse to make a major purchase and have several aspects of the sound get better and several things you liked get worse.
I moved from VPI to Linn LP 12… but from basically a $6K table (table, arm, and cartridge) to a $25K table. So, huge difference, but to maintain some of the characteristics I loved from the VPI required careful cartridge matching and a Silent Running Audio isolation platform ($3.5K). I could not be happier, but the transition was a lot of work. But I knowingly got into the project expecting lots of research (six months), and carefull choices and tweaking.
