What do you expect

 I have just installed new speakers to replace my 30 year old transmission line ones. They do sound a little better but by not much of a margin. I wasn't expecting a big improvement but modern technology has improved matters. But as for night and day differences then no. If there is a night and day difference between the sound of your HIFI equipment then one or the components you are testing is not High Fidelity .It is possible that both components being tested are not HIFI too. You can't have your sound quality cake and eat it.

My new speakers are better able to show up differences between the performance of different cartridges and styluses. For instance I have a cartridge with a conical stylus and another cartridge with a micro-line stylus. If you read HIFI magazines then you will be told that micro-line styluses are so much better than conical ones, they are also much more  expensive. I cannot honestly say that the performance of the micro-line stylus is significantly better, and there is certainly not a night and day difference. My new speakers enabled me to hear more detail coming coming from the micro-line stylus especially when playing classical music but not much more. The speakers also reproduced the tiny clicks, that all LPs are plagued with, better. LPs are fun but I much prefer to play CDs of classical music because there are no physical flaws apparent from the medium. 

When using  an LP record player with my old speakers, compared to the new ones, I can hardly tell the difference between one stylus or another if at all. Classical music can be used to test HIFI performance because of the wider dynamic range and variety of instruments. Also you can compare the recorded performance against a live performance , if a recorded violin sounds exactly like a violin in the flesh then you have a good recording and good HIFI equipment. The same could be said for the human voice when listening to opera.

Modern HIFI has probably become as good as it can get. Therefore you can understand why HIFI magazines and Manufactures use so much hyperbole to manipulate your expectation that your  new piece of expensive equipment is so much better than your old one. Let's be honest it can only be marginally better and you may not be able to tell the difference in a double blind test. The same applies to digital sampling rates, as CD 16/44.1 kHz  streams are more than sufficient to playback all music with complete clarity.

I often ask myself why would you want to pay thousands of pounds to play back an LP record which is made of almost worthless plastic that is full of flaws. I can understand why pride of ownership is important and that we can all appreciate top notch engineering, so good luck to anyone who has ten grand in their back pocket to spare - even if the music won't sound very much better.