Turning the volume up

-Which pickup are you using?

I'm using the ultra tracker cartridge. 

I googled your cartridge, and it seems to be a moving magnet. Output is 3.5 mV, which is lowish for a moving magnet, but well within normal range. Cartridge output varies wildly, and if you are happy with the sound of your vinyl, there is IMO no point in doing anything but turn up the volume. 

I know this might seem like a very dumb question but I need to turn the volume knob to 12 -1 o'clock just to get a volume anywhere close to my digital source at 9 o'clock. Is this bad for the amp or speakers to turn up so high?

No. 

No. In fact, it’s the digital source that is at "fault" here -being too loud after a short travel of the volume control. It's all good!

+ 1 tkr!

Just don't forget to turn volume down after playing LPs.

Thanks everyone for responding.

dweller- good point, unfortunately I found out the hard way. It happened yesterday and scared the s..t out of me. 

I use this outboard attenuator on my CDP to lower the volume to match my phono. You are better off using the volume in the upper range of the dial on your preamp. BTW, between 12 and 1 is perfect!
http://www.schiit.com/products/sys

The standard for consumer gear had been 0.5 volt output.So all phono, tape, FM radio gear was generally at the 0.5 volt output. And we all lived happy. Then came CD. And for some unknown reason, CD manufacturers decided to NOT use the consumer standard, but used the 2.0volt professional standard.
So ever since all digital sources have been much louder than the other sources. Few preamps adjust for this, and actually most preamp/amp combos have too much gain for some digital sources..

I have an Audio Note IQ3 cart (6.5 mV) mounted on my Nottingham Interspace Jr. TT's tonearm and I have to increase the gain as well. 

Very common for an analog front-end because vinyl requires more gain (power increase of the signal) than your digital sources.   

As @tkr pointed out, the output of your cartridge although low is within normal range.    Explore other MM cartridges with higher output but don't be surprised if you still find yourself turning up that volume control knob.

Enjoy!

2 volt output on digital sources is a curse! One volt would be much more useful and still capable of driving most amps to full output!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think @elizabeth is referring to the AC voltage required to produce 1 mV of power peak-to-peak.

Maggie,

Nope. Elizabeth is referring to what "full range output" means. That is, the maximum output from a CD player via fixed RCA outputs was decided to be 2V.

More here:

http://www.lavryengineering.com/wiki/index.php/Line_level

Best,

E