dangorange

I'm thinking this, try the 2M Red and go from there, like you said, it's not doing much of a dent in the budget.

btw, just wanted to thank everyone so far with all of your thoughtful responses, giving me a lot of things to think about, in a good way. One thing I enjoy when dealing with this kind of decision, I learn a lot in the process!

I really like the look of this! Although, it seems to be around $2500 without a cartridge, bit too spendy for me I think. It does give me pause... Feel like I should keep researching what interesting tables are out there, never seen nor heard of this one before!

That sonos is pretty interesting. Our house is fairly small, but open pretty open on the first floor, where most of the music would get played. This might be great for getting it out to our back yard, that's one thing I miss. We entertain a lot, and when it's nice out, we hang out in the yard. Even with the windows open, and playing music pretty loud, you can't hear it that well. Would be great to play records and hear it outside. I'll look into this.

Well I went into my local audio store, it's a pretty high end place to pick up a 2M Red. Of course while I was being written up and chatting about my set up and everything else I've mentioned here, he went into full salesman mode. Not in a bad way, but left me with stuff to think about, and no 2M Red either! His angle was(aside from trying to make a bigger sale) that I should upgrade my turntable. My speakers are the strongest link and my Marantz, according to him, has an exceptional pre amp in it, considering it's an all in one kind of amp/receiver. So all that said, upgrading from my debut iii to something like a Rega P3 or even the P6(that was my suggestion) would be a significant jump up, which I don't disagree with. I mean, this sort of just goes full circle to my original question and doesn't resolve much. I decided to wait on the cartridge and give it a little more thought. A new TT would be pretty cool. Ugh, this is a can of worms I should never of opened. Knowing me I'll end up buying some vintage Linn craziness or the like instead. At least this is a fun journey, I've been on worse.

Ha yeah, honestly you should go do that. Part of how I raised the cash was going around and finding bits and pieces that I just wasn't using and selling. Built up my paypal balance that way. Otherwise, with a daughter in preschool, I'd never be able to spend a cent on my interests!

Yes, it came stock with the Ortofon 5e, I've never changed it.

Do you think I would notice a step up in quality if I were to put a 2M RED on? I can get one at my local shop for around $100, maybe I'll try and see. I'm still trying to sort out the whole counter weight issue(whether I would need a different one for the RED) but I'm sure that's easily solved. FWIW, I do make an effort to sit down directly in front of my set up now and then, especially when I put on a special record I want to take in. It's just not something I get to do everyday.

Good to see another opinion from a different perspective, also in regards to a record cleaner, I'm leaning toward a just the manual spin clean as I don't have a massive collection of records and that money probably would go best to a turntable upgrade. I'll keep weighing the options and maybe even go for a listen at my local shop to A/B some stuff. I'd be curious how different some different set ups sound. I'm going to figure that my speakers are definitely helping the fact I feel my set up sounds excellent(to my ears at least) I used to have a pair of Dynaco A25's and they were great too. But once I was gifted the ProAc's it jumped up a big notch in quality.

Hey thanks, this is the kind of advice I was hoping for! I totally agree with both of these responses. What actually brought on my dilemma is whether I should upgrade my TT's cartridge or just make a leap for a new one, upgrade the source so to speak. I almost bought a 2m red but then got caught up on a couple of things. One was an article I read about not recommending upgrading the stock cartridge on the debut iii, something about it being optimized for the stock tonearm, and a thread here that never resolved about whether you need a larger counter weight if you put a 2M red on. Part of me thinks I should just buy the new Debut carbon which comes with a 2M red and sell my old one. Seems like I'd only be spending an extra $100 or so to upgrade the cart and a newer slightly better TT once it's all said and done. Definitely looking into the record cleaners too, something like that could be very cool to have. I missed out on a VPI 16.5 that went for cheap on the 'bay not long ago, kicking myself for not jumping on it.

Sorry for some odd sentences, can't seem to edit, blame it on beer

So I thought I'm in a unique enough situation to warrant a new topic. I recently sold a bunch of gear, mostly pro audio(I do film scoring) and I have some funds available to throw towards my home audio side of things. I've always been an avid player of vinyl records, grew up during a time when that's just what you bought, or a cassette! All I play on the home system is vinyl and I'm focusing on potentially improving that experience. Currently this is my set up & situation/environment. I have a pro ject debut iii my wife bought me, around 7 years ago, no real issues with it, it's completely stock. Amp is a Marantz 2275, had it forever, reminds me of the amp I would sit in front of as a kid in the late 70s early 80s. Then, I happened to be gifted years ago a pair of proac response 3.5's which are massive, sound amazing, & were very expensive 15 years ago or more when these were made. Basically this is my deal, I have up to $4k to spend on whatever I want. I'd like to keep it to around 2k since I have other non home audio things I like to buy, microphones etc. The thing is, I really have no issue with my current set up, and furthermore, it's not in an ideal listening environment. I mean, everything sounds great, but we just have one crowed room that my 4 year old daughter has taken over, so speaker placement, sound treatments, etc, ain't gonna happen or change. I throw a record on, go in the other room to cook, listening environment is all over the place. So what I'm wondering is, will I really feel a difference if I were to say upgrade to a Rega rp6 and a nice cart or similar. Or should I ditch the Marantz and get a dedicated amp/pre. Or maybe keep status quo and just buy records and maybe even a record cleaner. Ugh sorry, I really hope this isn't a nuisance thread as much as maybe some suggestions we don't normally throw out there. Also, I kind of don't want to upgrade my current TT, so comments directed at just upgrading the cartridge, I'm definitely interested in hearing anything. My thoughts initially are to get a new turntable, but my listening environment is definitely handicapped.

I grabbed it and just got in the mail today. They actually shipped it with another record I did not buy(as packing material?) The extra LP is actually pretty good too, I'll definitely be buying more from Kanine in the future!