New preamp or up grade my cartridge and or phono amp?

ghdprentice/zlone. I understand what you are saying. Though I have a friend who went that route and his listening room wound up isolating him from the rest of the household. He then integrated his 2CH system into the family room HT system. His wife is now listening to more music. 

onhwy61- Your advice struck home, I really do like the sound of my system I believe for the money the Rega components play way above their price point. That being said I will have a few thousand to spend on my system as a retirement present. Right now I’m leaning toward upgrading my cartridge and phono amp or trying something like a Rogue preamp either a new RP-1 or used RP-5. Would either of these be SIGNIFICANTLY better than the Emotiva in Reference Mode? Or is there something else out there that would work (thought about the Parasound Hint P6 but that’s also a kind jack of all things). I really don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of room treatments, new cables, new speakers etc. So I’ll go with either a preamp with HT bypass capabilities or upgrading the phono cart and phono amp. If I’m lucky😇 maybe both

On a side note. With my friend moving his system out to the family room, not only has his wife started to enjoy listening to music more. He has had company over, seen his turntable and asked do albums really sound better. After playing albums and the same tunes digitally (either cd's or downloads), some agreed some didn’t. But ALL were impressed with how good a good system makes the music they like sound. Some have invested thousands of dollars in systems to replace their Sonus or Bluetooth speakers they THOUGHT sounded perfectly fine. One even became a full blown Audiophile with the investment of several tens of thousands of $ that entailed. I’m guessing none of that would have happened if his system was isolated in a spare bedroom(more people getting into our little hobby can’t be a bad thing). But I'm sure for some people that GREAT sounding system in a small room is EXACTLY what they want and or need, it just isn’t going to work for me.

Thanks for the info soix. Any suggestions on a good preamp with HT capabilities other than the Rogue RP-1 or RP-5. I’m thinking the Parasound Hint P6 would put me in the circumstances as the Emotiva just w/out the HT stuff

I think your cartridge and TT are the best part of your system by far.

My Rega P3 with a tube preamp sounds better than anything I tried - and I tried a lot of inexpensive approaches.

And I 100% agree with you about the living room/sharing the wealth vs small room. I couldn't do a small dedicated room for many reasons. 

As with upgrading any audio component, which preamp would be driven primarily by what improvements you’re looking for and what sound characteristics are most important to you.  Bigger 3D soundstage, better tonality, etc. would be the kinds of things you should identify that you’re looking for and then go from there.  Rogue is actually interesting because it’s a neutral sounding tube pre yet still likely sounds quite a bit different from your Emotiva, and I believe Rogue is one of the few tube pre manufacturers that disables the tubes when using the HT bypass, which is really nice when you’re just watching movies or TV.  Anyway, if you can clarify more what you’re looking for you’ll get several good recommendations here.