What is turntable “liveliness”.

- Turntables matter. 

- No need to spend $75K. $3,000 used will do. 

Biggest improvement  after being sure the preamp load matches the cartridge, is to put it in a sealed lined box suspended.  Reducing acoustic feedback does wonders.   Sitting on a shelf between the speakers is about the worst place for it. 

Speed control helps as my friends who are musicians claim most LPs are not cut at the correct speed and pitch is off.  I am not a musician so I can't tell if an A is 440 or 441. Some can. 

Back in the day, I ran a Thorens I modified with a Grace arm. Platter was filled with plumbers putty. Sorbothane mat. We compared it to a friends SP-12 and a SOTA. Once set up, no difference. The Linn was a pain to get set correctly. I hope new tables are better. I think the mass I added to the Thorens really helped in speed consistency.  Oh, I put the pre-amp in the base of the Thorens so I could reduce noise and control the impedances better. My own, parallel FETs diff input, se output. 

Tables do seem to be a place where we go from cheap ( and sound like it) to half decent but cheap, to very good, well engineered but affordable, to silly ego mega-buck that usually sit out to impress friends and are never played.  

Yea, a lot of early CDs were transcribed with first generation 14-bit Sony's and the engineers had not learned the medium yet. But, I would rather have less than perfect sound than to miss all that great music. 

As for cost, you may not get what you pay for, but you certainly don't get what you don't pay for. As someone else said.

If your turntable does not have a frictionless cushion of compressed air or mag-lev, in 3D, that friction is causing noise and you can hear it. Vanity - no. Money - yes.

All the @lewm has written is spot on.  Or, at least, I agree with.

I wholeheartedly agree with his comment that absolute speed accuracy, while very nice to have, is not essential.  Speed “constancy” is.  I would take it a step further and suggest that there might be aspects related to a turntable’s temporal performance that relate to speed constancy that, just as with other “distortion” issues, are not fully understood.  Rhythm is THE most important aspect of music and hence the most important in its reproduction.  It is also the most neglected consideration in audiophile-speak.  I don’t claim to understand the “why’s”, but I am confident in saying that compared to the free, unrestricted rhythmic feeling of live music performance (assuming the playing is producing it), turntables vary greatly in how they reproduce this feeling.  Some capture (reproduce) that wonderful feeling of unrestricted and nuanced forward momentum in the music while others reproduce music with varying degrees of a feeling akin to the feeling of driving on the highway with your left foot on the brake.