My personal vinyl game-changer.

Alter3go

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So for the longest time I put the music that goes through my home theater AVR through a preamp first. One day I was showing a friend the difference between preamp and no preamp. First for the digital signal coming from my echo dot. Much to my chargrin, it sounded much better without it. So I got rid of the preamp.

Now my turntable always went through this preamp as well. Didn't know what it was like without it. That was until I got rid of the preamp, assuming it was a POS. Well for a while after this happened, I thought my either TT or phono stage (Art DJ II) was broken. It sounded hollow, and just plain ass-y. Then I thought to myself, "well, what about that preamp, maybe that was it?". So I plugged it back in, and viola! My sound was back to it's old magic. A sound so clear that I use digital as a benchmark to see if I like the press/mastering of the vinyl, and if it's not at least the same or better than the digital, then it goes back.

Before this, I always wondered why people paid so much for a phono stage. I thought it was a relatively insignificant part of the equation. "My $60 Art DJ is as good as any!" I thought. Apparently, it's not, it's really fudgeing not. It's actually quite awful (sorry) by itself. But apparently my preamp does some compensatory magic and makes it bloom. I also tried it with an even cheaper phono stage previously and it was still pretty awesome. It's such an amazing boost, and it saves me sooo much money because a good phono stage is so expensive. I recently upgraded to a Schiit Mani because my Art DJ did eventually break down (2 of them, I was fed up), and it was a nice upgrade. But not massive though. Still sounds kinda bad without the preamp, so I know this works for many phono stages.

Anyway, you're probably wondering at this point what preamp I am using. That's the interesting thing. When I started with home audio and vinyl (at about the same time), I was relatively cheap, and noticed that most home preamps retailed well over $100. On a budget and not to be deterred, I jerry rigged a car preamp to work in my home entertainment system. It was pretty easy to do, all you need is to split the cable of a 12V AC adapter with sufficient amperage. The cheap-ass preamp I got is the Power Acoustik PWM-19, and that's probably the best $40 I've ever spent really. I'm willing to bet that my previous $100 combo beats any phono stage at $400 or less, and my the combo with the new Mani ($190 total), reaches up to $700 levels, if not higher.

So if you're on a budget and want a shortcut to vinyl grandeur, I highly recommend checking this out. It's not much of an investment so there's not much to lose. If you do, please tell me what phono stage you're using and how it went, I'm super curious. I only use it for vinyl now, instead of both my vinyl and digital signals (it has two ins and two outs, the outs which can actually be mixed to a degree), because it seems to actually make the digital signal worse, but as I said, it ascends an analog vinyl signal to Godhood.

P.S. There are four gain knobs on the top of this thing you can adjust with a screwdriver. I maxed them all out. This is because there is a volume control (along with 4 EQ knobs, which I change for every record I put on) on it, and since this inputs to your main amplifier, it then acts as a gain knob instead of a volume knob. As a rule of thumb, the absolute max the volume knob should be at is only 1./3. Above that it starts amplifying all the little scratches of the record and the sound gets distorted. If you have any questions let me know.

P.P.S. My turntable is a Pioneer PL-518 with a Denon DL-110 cart. I've used this preamp with standard MM carts as well. It seems to work under all circumstances.
 
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That Pioneer PL 518 is a nice turntable, that you should have been able to buy for sensible money.
Denon DL-110's are also good value for money.
 
Yeah I picked up the TT 4 years back for about $135 with 4 vinyls (none of any significance), used, on either Craigslist or offer up, forgot which. The cart cost more though, and I paid full retail at $210. I very briefly used the Omicron Red before returning it, curious to see what doubling my money would do. It was a worthy investment.
 

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