2. home-theater
  3. 1119890772

Do I need a Preamplifier

Hi,

I am a novice in Home Audio setting up. I recently purchased a HK3480 Stereo Receiver, and Two Klipsch SB2 speakers to rig up my home audio setup. My CD Player is a cheap cyberhome entry level DVD player. I, like most of us have lots of digital music. It is stored on my computer, as well as on my MP3 Player (Creative Zen 30GB). I use a headphone Jack to RCA cable to hook up my MP3 player to my receiver. It sounds pretty good except for the fact that I need to crank up the colume to -25db to get good output. Also when playing from CD (Whose gain is set to max) I need to set the volume levels to -35db.

I would like to know whether I need to buy a preamp for this kind of setup.

Thanks
Boni
bonigopalan4ad6

Showing 4 responses by bonigv

bonigv
19 posts
 
Hi,

Very informative inputs. I do get good results by increasing the volume. I have a bad feeling of setting the output volume to max on the MP3 player. Neverthless I am doing that. Music quality is excellent i n my standards.

I tried with Phono inputs. That seems to put the preamplification to a different gear alltogether. However, my ears feels that the bass is a too high when I am routing the music through Phono. I need to do some more listening to see whether it is just an illusion. If you all, my learnt friends know of anything in this direction please let me know.

Also, I see some devices which can amplify a headphone jack output to line level. Do they work ?

Thanks
Boni
bonigv
19 posts
 
Snofun,

By amplifying you mean using a preamp before I feed into Receiver ?

Any comments on Boostaroo Portable Headphone Amplifier.

http://www.boostaroo.com/

Thanks
Boni
bonigv
19 posts
 
I understood what you are telling. That exactly is what my setup is currently. What I need to know is whether there is a device which can adjust the output of the headphone jack to a Line level input. That way, my receiver will not know the difference between input from headphone jack and any other line inputs.

Thanks
Boni
bonigv
19 posts
 
I do not have a level matching functionality on my HK3840. So to summarize, I will reisgn to jacking up the volume, when I have to connect my MP3 player to the receiver.

Thank you for all the help.
Boni
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