Preamp predicament

I have to agree with the rest ... I just read the Steroephile review on the NHT Super Zero. For their size, they do very well but they are so tiny it's hard to find anything to compete. They pretty much have to run with a sub and I have had pretty good luck with the old school Yamaha YST line although NHT makes a sub that goes with the Super Zero's. If you could step up just a bit in size there are several monitors that I believe will fill out much better. I have had really good luck with the Paradigm Studio 20's .... the little Proac monitors are very nice and quite small but are probably out of your price range. Any chance you could spring for the Proacs and get them to fit? You will still need that sub but you might get them to blend a bit better with the Yamaha sub. The other monitor that just blew me away for rock music is the Dynaudio Audience 42's. The bass is unreal for such a small monitor, They image very well and really surprised me. Still a little out of your price range and might still be a bit large compared to the Super Zeros.

Has2be is right on. The Super Zeros have some nice qualities (I had them in the past, they are not bright), especially how they image and render the human voice. But they have no bass. I too believe your problem is the Yamaha sub, which is not able to integrate well with the quick midbass of the Super Zeros.
For $300 I would recommend looking into used HSU subs with the smaller drivers (ST 2), or better yet, Gallo subs that occasionally come up on the used market. There are, of course, many good choices out there that I'm omitting, but all things being equal, I would try to stick with smaller drivers 6 1/2 - 8 inch when matching subs with speakers that barely go below 100hz.
The second issue, and perhaps the larger one, is successfully integrating the sub with the speakers. Do a search, there are many threads on the issue here on Audiogon.

Is your vinyl playback experience disappointing compared to CD, or are both disappointing? If both are disappointing, I wouldn't be looking at the phono stage as a culprit.

Cheers.

Of the albums that I have on both vinyl and CD, I tend to prefer the vinyl. I always assumed that this is because my CD player is a 300 disc Sony jukebox and not anything special.

Dear Ho72: Unfortunately I don't have experience with any of the audio products you own other than your cartridge that IMHO is a good one.

+++++ " And let it be understood that I'm not really an audiophile, I just want to listen to music reproduced in a way that... *takes me there*, for lack of a better description. " +++++

no any analog rig I know is a " plug and play " rig. There are some critical factors to achieve a decent quality performance with an analog source ( cartridge. ): cartridge pin connectors perfectly clean, hedashell pin connectors prefectly clean, the best headshell wires you can afford ( Ikeda S-50 are great ones. ), " perfect cartridge set up: overhang, VTA/SRA, Azymuth and VTF; you have to " play with these last three parameters till you achieve the best performance from that cartridge, LP's with good cleaning as the cartridge stylus and now that we are talking of " cleaning " you need an electrical clean audio system supply.

In the other side almost any home audio system romm needs some kind of treatment for a better integration ( better quality sound reproduction. ) between the room and the audio system.
Here I'm talking of room treatment and speakers/sub " right/precise " position/place in that room. Many times a change in the speakers/sub position makes and help to attain better performance as happen with cartridges when we made a change on VTA/SRA/Azymuth.

The right and precise whole audio system set up is always critical to " takes me there " and who cares about always receive great rewards!!

regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.