A lot of people don’t grasp what a phono stage is for. After all, it’s no problem to link up your old turntable to your up-to-date sound system without a phono preamp, and play all of your old records like you used to 30 years ago. Except, of course, it’s not quite as good as it was back in the day. The sound quality isn’t as fine. There’s crackle and background noise – before you even put the needle down on the LP, which is a sure indication that something is wrong. It’s not that the record is old, or the turntable just has too many miles on it: it’s because you’re missing the phono amp which is specifically designed to interface the turntable with your hifi, providing the kind of signal it has to have to give decent quality playback.
The signal that comes off a standard turntable is very low. That’s no problem if your amp and speakers are built for that kind of signal level, as they would be if you were using ones you bought at the same time, that were always intended to be used with vinyl. But when you try mixing old and new, you run into difficulties. The turntable signal is too quiet. You can get around that to a reasonable extent by turning the volume on your hifi way up high, but that brings plenty of problems of its own. For starters, the louder it is, the more ‘noise’ you get: you are amplifying everything, including the sound that you need (i.e. the music signal from the record). That means that all the extraneous, unwanted noise gets amped up too – which you hear as hiss and static. That will be there even before you put the needle down and start playing the record, because it’s not a problem with either LP or deck. It’s a problem with your hifi, which was never made to play records.
The fix is to buy a phono preamp, also known as a phono stage. This changes the signal from your turntable, preparing it for the hifi, which can then play it as it would a signal from a CD or modern input. Very few modern hifis have a built-in phono amp, since it’s now quite a rare and specialist thing, and an unnecessary expense for most sound systems. But if you’re into vinyl, then there’s no sensible substitute for one.
Please visit http://www.whestaudio.co.uk/ for further info.