Analogue front end. You want more weight, scale and dynamics.Where do you start upgrading?

Big +1’s to @lewm and ​​​​@tomic601 here. Throwing more and more money to "upgrade" into increasingly exotic components isn’t the panacea you think it is.

No, the source contributes greatly, mswale.

As an example, if I replace my Nottingham Spacedeck with Nottingham Dais or Anna Log, or even with one step up Hyperspace, besides possibly other improvements I will get more of what we are talking about. With everything else remaining the same.

You start with basic things, and that is turntable itself, not an arm, not a cartridge, not a phono stage. Turntable and electricity.

As for preamp/amp and speakers, that’s another subject.

I don't think you can aurally separate a turntable from the tonearm/cartridge, or at least very few of us can, because you would have to take the same tonearm and cartridge en bloc and move them from turntable A to turntable B, and back to A, in order to get a bead on what is the specific contribution of the turntable. And of course the downstream components have to remain constant.

Of course, that's exactly what I meant, everything else remains the same. That's the reason why I don't plan to upgrade the front end soon, I would have to upgrade everything, starting with the table, if I wanted big improvement. And I would want big improvement or why upgrade at all ?

I found that VPI turntables /  arms have very substantial weight and scale. While sprung turntables are often described as lively, VPI and other heavy mass unsprung tables seems to have much greater weight in presentation, Then, the higher the investment along these lines will net better dynamics, and other good attributes.