What is the chain of importance in analog system ?

Room acoustics and speakers, regardless of whether the source is analog or digital.

Kal

Dear Nolitan: IMHO the whole subject is to understand the individual role of each analog link and its relationship between them more that the $$$$ for each one ( of course that money always is important. ) like your last post.

I agree with Syntax and Dertonarm that the most critical link is the phono stage for MM and MC cartridges. Is here in this phono stage where the cartridge signal must pass for a complex and " heavy " process to be amplified ( gain up. ) to a level that can be handle for the line stage and then to the amplifier, this is one of the important jobs of the phono stage. The other important one is that in that phono stage the cartridge signal has to be re-equalized through a inverse RIAA eq. stage to attain that the cartridge signal that goes to the line stage be with a flat frequency response.
In both of these phono stage process the cartridge signal ( always ) " suffer " a degradation ( different degradation forms: noise, distortions, colorations,etc, etc ) during the signal phono stage " manipulation " .
The main target on a phono stage is that the cartridge signal comes out with minimum lose/add whole distortions trying to preserve the cartridge signal original integrity.
But this is more easy to say that to attain that's why always is desirable to own the best quality performance phono stage we can.

In second place IMHO the tonearm/cartridge match is a crucial audio link ( together not separate or tonearm+TT like you post. ) because the same cartidge perform different in different tonearms ( everything the same. ) and we have to match the cartridge and find the tonearm that can make that the cartridge show its best quality performance.

Then the TT and tonearm internal wiring/headshell wires and tonearm IC cables as the TT/tonearm/cartridge set-up.

It is obvious that all analog links are important ( any ) and we can assess this through our each audio system experiences that when we " touch ", making tiny changes, in one analog link the whole analog quality performance change too.

As Dopogue post: +++++ " different folks, different chains. " +++++

IMHO there are and exist opinions just opinions but no absolute rules or only one " road ".

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Raul's experience mirrors my own, with one minor exception.
(I put the tone arm cabling with the importance of the tone arm, rather than with the turntable. I've heard some mediocre cabling on an otherwise decent tone arm, and after upgrading it, the performance was elevated tremendously.)

But of course, as it always is with assembling an audio system, the weakest link in your audio chain will always be the limiting factor. All of these items are very important, and upgrading one well beyond the others will yield limited benefits. So my chain of importance would be as follows:

1a. Phono Stage (and especially so with LOMC cartridges)
1b. Tone arm, (including cabling) and Cartridge
1c. Turntable

(Notice that they are all number 1 in importance, with just subtle subcategories! :-)

My two cents worth anyway.

There is no single chain of importance that you can follow alone to assure good results.

IF the gear is decent and you set it up correctly and each part integrates well, it will sound good. Otherwise it will not.

Once you set up any decent gear correctly, changing cartridge and/or phono stage will make the biggest difference in the resulting sound.

I think the turntable is the most important componet in an 'analoge chain' and this is where one should start. The success of a record playback system depends more on its mechanical interfaces/synergy than on its electrical componet. If I had to make an order of effect it would go like this:
1) turntable
2) tonearm
3) cartridge
4) phono
Cartridge/arm matching is important as is cart mounting, alignment and tracking angle.
That being said I would pick my table first,then cart,and pick an arm based on the cart. Once you've got that together a dedicated phono could be something to extract that last ounce of performance out of your rig. Top notch electronics can't make up for poor sources, but a good source can make a pedestrian rig sing.(Isn't that why CDs took over in the mainstream?)
I do think the cart is responsible for the sound and resolution of your system and the turntable/arm responsible for extracting the most out of the cart. That's why I started with the TT.