Interface: Cartridge-Preamp or Cart-Tonearm?

Raul has good advice. If the cartridge does not work with the arm, you can pretty well forget about the preamp somehow fixing things!

Arm cartridge has to be more important - a mistracting cartridge can wreck the most valuable component of your system - the records.

Back in the glory days of analogue when dealers had multiple turntables/arms as a dealer I found that certain arms worked better with certain turntables. There is synergy beyond the specs. I assume complementary resonances is a big factor as there are no perfect components - hence the arguments and differing views.

So I try to find the most common arm/tt combinations people are running and then find the most common cartridges people are using with that arm. Then try and then from that group of cartridges check the reviews out. Also when you read the reviews check what speakers the reviewers are using as that will give you an idea of their preferences as well and the context of that review.

"Similar" was not quite the right word. I meant certain chemistry, synergy. Cartridge and speakers are two points where the energy conversion occurs, the rest are "wires" and "supporting structures" with the exception of the table itself which occupies a unique position.
Often it appears that people just can't find the satisfying sound no matter what they do, so it is possibly that they cannot because there is a mismatch between the front end, especially perhaps the cartridge, and the speakers.
We can debate all that.

First of all, my compliments to the contributors of this thread for their respectful suggestions that I incorporate.
Especially what Dover said and we tend to forget these days.
I've also experienced the mistracking caused by phonostage that Dan ed mentioned.
Dear Inna, I'm supporting your advice as the cart & speakers are the most personalised items in our set-up. I think we can't debate on this subject as there are obviously different favorites of extreme opposites.
(ie:) Proac Vs Sonus Faber , LS3/5a Vs Wilson Audio , Altec Vs Focal , Soundlab Vs Magnepan , Full-Range BLHs Vs Compressor Drivers FHs.
(and:) Colibri Vs Benz , Clearaudio Vs Koetsu , Dynavector Vs Zyx , Lyra Vs Shelter , Denon DL 103R Vs AT 33 PTG/II.
Sometimes we can find pleasure by matching opposites like : Soundlab + Koetsu , but the rule is mostly as you state. If we praise speed & openness, we avoid the "musicality" term.
Something that I would like to remind to the OP that is not asked but IMHO is very critical for our hunting of the most satisfying system, is the whole wiring loom! For 30 years I've had the impression that the cables were the last thing to add as a fine tuning procedure. But no more for me. I've realised that a great help could offered by choosing them in the first place! Obscured characters exposed clearly with utmost definition by a credible cable system and the comparison between components become easier. The expression of individual performance strengths is highlighted to the point that I can say with confidence that to me it is the first priority this cable theme. Then, the phonolinepre follows as the heart of the system that is equally demanding of our greatest attention before we start to hunting for anything else! With these two by hand, the success is guaranteed and every one of us can find his favorite speaker & cartridge without much effort. I don't want to be out of topic here, and I apologise for if it seems to provoke a heretic approach, but I just want to secure a method of choosing components without regrets about the right evaluation afterwards. And that is, because the cables & phonolinepre are not so much in the ballpark of what we like as a flavour, but I accept them more as the monitoring tool to judge all the rest items in the chain. And these items are quite several if one counts the blending combination provided by the apparent tube rolling!

Thank you.

while the cartridge does need to be compatable with the arm's compliance in a general sense, most cartridges are compatable with most arms these days. and if a cartridge or phono stage is too colored to match the other, then one or both are to be avoided. if you have an extremely low output MC (say below .2mv) then obviously it is essential than the phono stage be high gain low noise. these are all common sense issues, but to comment one must first state the obvious.

so assuming all those things, the most important issue (setting aside spot on setup) is the arm; a great arm will make a moderatly priced but well chosen cartridge sound refined and musical. a mediocre arm holds back the best of cartridges. i'll take a top level arm with a moderately priced cartridge every time over an expensive cartridge and a mediocre arm. an arm is the 'hard part', it does the heavy lifting in a vinyl set-up. it allows the cartridge to attain that precise set-up and groove tracking ability where the magic happens.

i've compared arms and compared cartridges, and when the arms are different things are much more different than when the cartridges (within similar price ranges) are different. arms are even more significant than tt's with similar designs. you want to upgrade the performance of your vinyl, get a better arm.

better arms have the potential to have less distortion. period.

so it's not so much a matter of cartridge-arm interface verses cartridge-phono stage interface as much as it's simply getting the very best possible arm you can, making sure it is solidly attached to the plinth, and then setting it up perfectly.

i've had more than a few cartridges, more than a few tt's, more than a few phono stages, and more than a few arms. in the last couple of years i've been fortunate to watch development of a series of tonearms, and it is easy to see where the real performance in a vinyl setup comes from.

as arm performance improves, cartridges get better and better, and previously held perspectives on cause and effect get hit with the real truth. once you reach a certain level of cartridge quality it becomes a flavor issue, once you reach a certain level of phono stage you pay astonishingly higher dollars for dramatically diminished returns.

arm performance is like bass performance in a system, until you hear bass in your system without the distortion, you won't realize that you have been listening to distortion, it's an experiential thing. you cannot explain it to someone, they have to hear it for themselves. their reference for bass performance must change.

arms are like that too.

so what does that matter in terms of cartridge choosing?

the least colored cartridge will continue to improve as the arm improves. as you remove distortion from the arm, the true character of the cartridge will be more and more evidant. likely you are moving down a system path desiring better, lower distortion, sound.

12 years ago i had a Koetsu RSP as my reference in a Levinson-Wilson system. it balanced. since then i moved toward lower distortion, more natural sounding systems and even though the RSP still had a piece of my heart, it was exposed as being too colored to live with. i sold it a couple of years ago.