Good to hear all these viewpoints. I take Frogman's point about hall ambience being well developed by the addition of a sub...that was my (theoretical) understanding too. That's a clear direction to go in and I plan to pursue it. Bruckner needs all the help he can get.
The cartridge choice is an issue still. I remember a few years back, at one of the high-end exhibitor rooms at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver; I was listening to a good turntable, with two identical arms mounted on it, each carrying a different MC cartridge. The quality difference in how they each rendered the music was dramatic and clearly related to price. That observation is what stimulated my original question about upping my cartridge quality. But within the domain of reasonably decent MM cartridges do you think perhaps the range of quality is narrower?
The cartridge choice is an issue still. I remember a few years back, at one of the high-end exhibitor rooms at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver; I was listening to a good turntable, with two identical arms mounted on it, each carrying a different MC cartridge. The quality difference in how they each rendered the music was dramatic and clearly related to price. That observation is what stimulated my original question about upping my cartridge quality. But within the domain of reasonably decent MM cartridges do you think perhaps the range of quality is narrower?