Turntable volume help

A follow-up to my previous post. A reasonable way of introducing additional gain into the system might be to insert a one-tube line stage between the phono stage and the integrated amp. The ASL Line One being an example. I had one in my system temporarily some years ago, and it seemed reasonably uncolored and neutral.

This assumes that utilizing the additional gain will not result in your amplifier being asked to supply more power than it is capable of. What speakers are you using?

Regards,
-- Al

Al thank you so much for your post. That helped a ton. I pretty much just dove into vinyl with no research or anything, so I didn't even think to look up things like input sensitivity. I will research some amps & line stages & see what would be a good fit. I've kind of been looking at new amps anyway :) Thanks again for your help! Btw, I'm using klipsch rf-52's.

Let's remember first that the further a volume pot is turned down, the less linear it is. If you can run the volume pot wide open, that is the closest that you can get to no volume pot at all. So no need to worry about running the volume pot at that top of its range.

The real problem is with the CD mandated output of 2V. They set this as a standard so that the CD would sound louder than other line level sources, such as tuners, tape decks, Elcasette decks, etc. And louder than most MM cartridges played into the standard phono gain of 40db. Why? Louder was better in the showroom. First generation CDs sounded pathetic, but it was one way to showcase "perfect sound forever".

What to do? Simple, turn up the volume, there is nothing wrong with your rig. Most rigs that have both CD replay and LP replay will have the CD sound louder, mine certainly does.

Not sure I'm buying that. My CA 840C CD player had an average output of 400 mV (measured) for most CD program material (single ended). That is on order with a phono stage running 40 dB gain and 4 mV cartrige output.

Thanks again for all of the input! After much consideration & speaking with jolida, I have decided to return the rega & go for a higher quality phono preamp. I ended up ordering a jolida jd-9. Hopefully this should resolve my volume dilemma & get better tone in the process.