What do you mean you “heard” the turntable

I have some very nice recordings of Doug MacLeod , Terry Evans, and Sam McClain. They are all on the Audioquest label and recorded with all Audioquest wire in the recording chain. They all have a very discernible Audioquest signature. I have a whole slew of records recorded all over the place that were all mastered at The Mastering Lab by Doug Sax. Because they cover performers as diverse as Linda Ronstadt, Nelson Riddle and Jackson Browne I could play those all night long and unless you know Doug Sax if you were paying attention at all you would almost certainly assign the Doug Sax signature sound to some component in my system. Which flattering as that would be would be wrong.

The more transparent a system the less it imposes on the signal and the more it becomes whatever signal happens to be passing through. There's one record I could hardly stand to play through the first side. It made my system so unlistenable! Reading the jacket I discovered it was proudly recorded using all Mark Levinson electronics including some mixing panel he designed. So people who can't afford to have their lives ruined by his components can do it with his recordings, I guess.

The vast majority of recordings are of course nowhere near as distinctive as any of these. Which make it easy for us to be lulled into the illusion we are listening to the system we see, forgetting "the system" extends all the way back to the recording venue.

To pick any one component out from all of that, play a few cuts and know what it sounds like, man, them's some good ears.

I don't understand the attraction of vinyl. Compared to digital, you only hear a fraction of the detail. I also can't believe you can hear any difference between a $500 turn table verses a $20,000 turn table. I thought the difference is in the quality of the cartridge. However, even if you buy the most expensive cartridge, digital is always going to sound better

.
The attraction to vinyl is love of music. This essence of this is distilled down into Michael Fremer's iconic comment that, "There's more there there."

Its easy to hear the difference a better turntable makes. Not only the turntable as a whole, but each individual component of the turntable. This is especially obvious if, like me, you would change just one part at a time. I've heard the exact same turntable with only the motor changed. Simply going to a more steady drive you hear greater bass authority, improved harmonic development, an overall much more involving sound. Changing only the platter, I once heard Chris Brady demo two platters on the same table. Huge, obvious difference everyone in the room heard it easily. Even something as seemingly minor as the thrust bearing, the piece at the bottom of the bearing on which the bearing turns. I've replaced that and the ball bearing that turns on it. Just that one little piece within the bearing and it was easy to hear the difference.

All this is because a turntable is not just a turntable. It is a bearing, platter, motor, base, suspension, arm, and cartridge. The arm itself is not just an arm either. The arm is comprised of a head shell, arm tube, a housing with bearings that varies tremendously by design, some sort of anti-skate mechanism, mount, and internal wiring. Then there is the cartridge, which itself is made of a stylus, cantilever, suspension, coils, magnets, body, and terminals. The job of all this is to transform microscopic undulations in vinyl into a voltage that varies as the precise analog of the squiggles. How microscopic? The smallest squiggles on a vinyl record are on the order of the size of an organic molecule. 

The problem is the instant the platter starts spinning the whole kit and kaboodle starts vibrating. Which is nothing compared to when the stylus starts squiggling back and forth, with forces acting on it the equivalent of nearly a ton per square inch. 

Of course the quality and precision of each and every component involved affects the resulting sound. For certain the better and more perfectly executed the design of these components the better this will work. All this precision and perfection, does anyone really doubt it costs more to do it better? Really?

And if digital is always going to sound better, then how come no one who has actually heard the same recording compared in my presence has said so?