SME30 vs $25 eBay turntable-a David vs Goliath shootout; audiophile vinyl rip FLAC

This is a reseed of an earlier upload, but now I have added metadata.

This is a comparison of circa $30,000 worth of a premium SME30 turntable, equipped with a Graham 2.2 tonearm and a Jan Allaerts cartidge. The SME was sited on about $1200 worth of an isolation platform and fitted with over $1000 worth of Cardas Golden Reference tonearm cable. It was then sent to a $15,000 custom built all-tube phono stage assembled with premium parts and NOS tubes etc.

The other table was sourced from eBay for the princely sum of $25.00. A few hours was spent modifying it, which admittedly greatly improved its performance with very, very little extra cost-apart from the time involved. It was fitted with a $2500 Lyra Helikon SL cartridge that was sent into the identical tube phono stage that the SME table used.

One set of rips is identified by an 'R' suffix, while the other with a 'G' suffix. The G's and the R's sound consistently different with one version typically being the preferred one.

Which one do you prefer, and why?? It would help if you listened to these through a main system instead of built in laptop speakers, but high quality earphones should show the differences up just fine.