EvanWharton

I'm looking for the Guster albums Keep It Together, Ganging Up on the Sun, and Easy Wonderful. Anyone selling?

Anyone out there have this record and willing to sell it? Make yourself known!

Also, if I buy a separate 2 channel stereo amp for my TT, but decide down the line that I want to use my Onkyo to set up surround sound for my TV, is there any way to "share" a pair of speakers between the two systems? Is there some sort of splitter that would allow me to use one set of my speakers for my vinyl playback but also include those speakers in my surround sound system (as front speakers possibly)?

Your front pair are your stereo pair be them A or B and as has been said make sure the receiver is set to 2 Ch (stereo)

 

In general a proper 2 Ch stereo amp will sound better because your surround sound amp is designed primarily for AV sound rather than music and its trying to be all things to all men but unless you are after proper hifi sound it will work just fine and do a perfectly adequate job.

 

With on board phono stages it's a question of how vintage, if it's a proper vintage unit from the heyday of vinyl i.e. late 60's to mid 80's then the chances are the on board phono stage will be pretty good and in some cases very good but if it's after that the chances are it will be piss poor because as YeAhX mentioned it's an afterthought and Onkyo were particularly bad for this so be glad yours hasn't got a phono stage in.

 

There are a lot of general rules for this stuff which are explained very well in the many pages of the beginners guide and as I say they are general so there are always exceptions but to give you a little insight in general for music a proper 2 channel amp not a receiver is best and preferably it needs to be in 3 or more boxes (phono stage, pre amp, power amp). Although it will do a perfectly adequate job an AV receiver isn't considered hifi because it's not intended for music primarily and it will do some electronic signal processing in the output mode selection regardless of which output mode you are in which just adds unwanted and unneeded electronics into the audio chain and it contains a radio tuner which is bad for the same reasons as the need to split stuff in to separate boxes which is electrical noise and the need to isolate it. The signal processing is probably what you have picked up somewhere as a negative against using an AV receiver for 2 channel.

 

There are many many variations and stages along these lines but the golden rule is if you like what you hear then it's good enough until you go mad and spend some more money so by all means do your research and get the basics right but don't worry about the minutia yet, a really expensive system badly set up and positioned will sound average but an average system properly set up and positioned will sound good.

 

One tweak you might be able to make is with your A and B front speakers as you might be able to bi amp your speakers if they are bi-ampable so read the manuals for your amp and it will tell you how to wire them up for this if it does it. Some of the Onkyo's do and some don't so you would need to do a bit of research on both your amp and speakers. Don't get confused with bi amping and bi wiring, bi amping is good and bi wiring is pointless but sometimes manufacturers refer to their speakers as bi wireable which is confusing as at the speaker it means exactly the same thing but at the amp it doesn't, bi meaning 2 means that with bi amping you drive a set of speakers with 2 amp outputs rather than 1 (A+ and bi wire means you wire the two sets of speaker terminals from one amp which is pointless as all you do is give speaker wire manufacturers more business.

 

Have a good read through the beginners guide there is a lot of very good information so it's worth the read and although it will raise some more questions it will answer the simple ones and any new questions will be better educated ones.

 

Welcome to the equally frustrating and beguiling but wallet emptying world of hifi and enjoy. 

I'm open to buying a 2 channel stereo amp. Can you recommend me a few models in the $400 and under range that would be worth checking out that would work with my current setup? I'm getting a lot of the "frustration" mentioned in the post above....the internet can be an infuriating place (:

Ok, I understand. Thanks! So if I wanted to eventually add a surround sound system for movies and such, I could connect them to the other speaker inputs (while having my turntable's speakers connected where I have them now) and switch between the "A" and "B" speaker sets and be just fine?

A slightly unrelated question....I know of people who have old vintage receivers with built in phono pre amps but choose to use an external preamp.  Is there any benefit to having a vintage receiver if you're not even using the preamp that is built into it? 

Thanks for humoring me! I'm starting to understand all this, there's just a few things I'm still confused on.

Hi all! I am fairly new to all this, so excuse me if this is a stupid question!

I currently have my AT-PL120 running through a TCC TC-750 preamp into my Onkyo TX-SR313. My question is in regards to the Onkyo. It is a newer receiver that has 5.1 surround. I have my table plugged into the input labeled "CBL/SAT" and my speakers connected to what is labeled as "Front B." My question is if this receiver is a bad fit for my setup. With it being model that has surround sound, is it converting my signal to digital? Basically, is the receiver having a negative impact on my sound in any way. Thanks!