Turntable Platform - What do you place your TT on

I am in that stage of my analogue expedition where I find the weakest link in my vinyl chain is the platform on which my TT is placed. I currently use a simple coffee table like furniture to keep my TT on. My TT is a Nouvelle Platine Verdier and as I see it, it is quite sensitive to the platform it is placed on. I suppose most TTs are like that.

My TT was acquired only few months back and I do not have any rack space for it so I placed it on a wooden furniture near my system. The sound is slow and woolly :-(. I tried placing a TAOC sound creation board between the TT and the furniture, this improved the sound quite a bit but still the immediacy, springiness, transparency that this TT can do is not yet there. I then tried inserting a Finite Element ceraball and that really got things going. Great transparency, speed and immediacy albeit at the cost of lean, hard tones.

These small experiments leads me to believe that the platform for the turntable is extremely crucial to make it perform anywhere close to its potential. More crucial than cables and power conditioning IMO.

The questions that I am trying to answer is:
1. Is it a wrong approach to try variety of platforms on top of a coffee table ? Do I need to invest on a dedicated rack to sort this out ?

2. Can I solve this problem within a budget of $1k ?

The rest of my chain is:
1. RCM Sensor Prelude Phonostage
2. Naim CD5X + Flatcap2
3. Naim Nait 5i integrated
4. Tannoy Turnberry SE speakers

Thanks a lot for your advice.