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Phono / headphone / passive pre-amps

Phono stages are very useful devices should you decide to add a turntable to your hifi system or home cinema system. The output from a phono cartridge is very small in comparison to a modern source such as a CD player, so an extra stage is needed unless your hi-fi amplifier has been designed with a dedicated phono input. Moving Magnet (MM) cartridges have an ouput of around 3mV, but moving coil cartridges have an even smaller output voltagein the order of 100µV, so MC cartridges need even more amplification than MM types. Most phono stages can handle both MM and MC cartridges at the flick of a switch, but if you do need advice when choosing please email us or call.

Investing in a good quality headphone amplifier will ensure you get the best possible sound quality from whatever type of headphones you have. Headphones need sufficient voltage and current drive to perform at their best, and this is the job of the headphone amplifer. It must do this whilst producing very low noise and distortion, and sometimes you can connect more than one pair of headphones at a time, for sociable private listening. Often you can add an upgrade power supply to your headphone amp to take it's performance to the next level, which is a very cost effective upgrade.

Connect your headphone amp to your tape loop circuit of your hi-fi amplifier using two pair of stereo audio cables, remember to use good quality cables to get best sound quality.

We stock MM and MC phono stages and headphone amplifiers from Graham Slee, Creek, Lehmann and Project.