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MR Brett Haverland.


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If someone could answer a question for me I love vinyl & have been collecting for a few years now have a good turntable. I have been using an old decent amp for years a kenwood model but the speakers keep cutting off and crackling. I have a reciever in mind to replace it being a harman Kardon avr 1500 it has no phono input but was going to buy a decent preamp will that work and work well. Or should I buy a old amp with the phono input or should I get a newish one with the phono input. I want the best sound possible can someone help me?

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If you're into vinyl and want the best sound possible, I would stay away from AVR s...especially one without a phono stage. You'd essentially be buying it to just drive your speakers, and there are a ton of amps that could do that and sound better than an AVR. There are so many different routes you could take...new, vintage, integrated, separates...all could bring you great playback quality. What's your budget? And what kind of speakers do you have?

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A midrange integrated amp in the $1000ish range would likely have a good phono stage built in, which would give you plenty of juice for your speakers and negate the need for a separate phono preamp (especially if you find one that also has a MM/MC switch). I'd look at models from Marantz, Rotel, Yamaha, Denon, Cambridge, etc. If you find a used one that's a little older (5-10 years), you'd probably end up paying $500-600, which would be a good value for your money.

Also, I wouldn't pay too much attention to wattage. This is a misleading figure which manufacturers can manipulate, and doesn't accurately indicate how powerful an amp is. What I'm using now is only rated at 75 watts, but I can barely tolerate getting close to the halfway point on the volume dial, and it crushes other amps I've had, one of which was rated at 200 watts per channel. Wattage ratings on speakers are also not really helpful. It's actually safer to use speakers rated lower than the amp; under powering speakers would be more likely to cause damage.

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