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Low volume on turntable??

Hi everyone, so I’m new to vinyl and have a lot to learn but I just hooked up a my first turn table, and with my preamp at maximum volume, and amp at full gain, it was still veryy quiet and had no depth/bass. The turntable is an old Denon DP-31L that I just installed a new cartridge in (AT-95E) --->Cary Audio AES SE-3 preamp---->McIntosh MC2125--->Klipsch RP-5’s. The system sounds magnificent running .wav vinyl rips with a Monarchy DIP upsampler--> Emotiva XDA-1 DAC in between my comp and the preamp, so there must be something wrong with either the unit, or how i hooked it up (basic built in RCA to preamp, with the integrated ground wire running to the Mcintosh chassis). On the plus side the ultra-quiet music has no hums, or background distortion whatsoever, even at full volume.

Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated! Cheers
hockey4496

Showing 6 responses by mofimadness

mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
Your Cary preamp doesn’t have a phono stage in it. It’s line level only. You will need to get an outboard phono stage or buy a new preamp that has a built-in phono input.

RIAA, (cartridge) output needs to be boosted to a higher level.

Here's a pretty well written, altough a little basic, discussion on preamps/phono stages.

http://www.co-bw.com/Audio_All_about_phono_preamp.htm
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
The Schiit Mani is a great little phono stage and sells new for $129. That would be a great match for your Denon table and AT cart.  Better than the NAD.

http://schiit.com/products/mani
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
Swamp beat me to it. What he said is correct. Also, the preamp out will work, but you will have to use the volume control on the Sony to raise the output level.

The signal coming from the "tape out" is fixed and cleaner, so that would be best sound.

Since the Sony is an A/V receiver, you might have to get into the menu setting and tell it what you are doing.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
Shure M97xE around $70
Ortofon 2M Red around $100

These (2) IMHO, are better than the AT100E.  I have the AT95E on one of my tables and it's a great little performer.  Not sure if the AT100E is really a step up.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
Al...thank you for the very kind words.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,192 posts
 
lewm...there is no way he could have gotten that rig to a volume level that he could even perceive a frequency imbalance.  It would have been barely loud enough to even hear.  He even states that it was "ultra quiet".

I completely agree with you that if he could have heard it louder, there would have been a very strange frequency imbalance and a rather weird overall sound.
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